My sweet seeeesta and our friend are coming to visit this weekend! I’m so excited and roasting a huge chicken while I watch every car that passes by. It’s very lovely that they are coming for the weekend since it’s a 10 hour drive. We plan on checking out some hot springs, going fishing and hiking up to the Jumbo Valley, an absolutely stunning mountain pass home to the worlds largest Grizzly habitat. An old guy in town told us a funny story today, he was at the gas station, eating a muffin and bent down to check his tire pressure. He put the muffin down on his trunk and while he was fiddling with the tire, a bear stole his muffin and brushed up against him non-chalantly. Lots of bears around these parts, so hopefully we’ll see a Grizz on our hike, just not too close…
I ripped the last of the kale out of the garden today as the frost is coming soon. What to do with a big bunch of fresh kale? Make a fabulous salad of course, loaded with honey crisp apple slices, parmesan cheese and a tarragon-mustard vinaigrette. It will pair beautifully with our balsamic roast chicken and crispy roasted potatoes.
I don’t always know what to write about. On this food blog, which I suppose is entirely supposed to focus on food, that which nourishes us and how to best enjoy it. Though I do consider myself, and all of you for that matter, judges of good taste, I also feel like holy fuck, we are so lucky. First of all, to eat and have no real worries about where our next meal is coming from, but on top of that blessing, to photograph this nourishment, to share it far and wide. Whoa. I look at these numbers sometimes, I watch the real time on google analytics of all the people from all over the place checking out this meal that I created and wrote about and photographed and digested and gave back to the earth. It’s surreal to me just how deeply we are all connected, each and every one of us. Even that neighbour that you fucking can’t stand and your uptight stupid know it all boss, the primary investor at Monsanto and the guy who tried to shoot Harper yesterday. Does that perpetuate a feeling of compassion within us, or does it strike a chord of anger? I think for me it’s a bit of both, recently there was a study done on the worlds population and if all the food were divided equally, how many calories each person would be allotted daily. 2700. 2700 calories is plenty, for anyone, not to mention a child or elderly person just wouldn’t be consuming that many calories, so it would all balance itself out. Is the possibility of this statistic even real? It would seem so, yet the gluttony which rears its ugly head around every corner stifles the souls knowledge of the potential for every single one of us to be fed. Nourishment, to me, simply doesn’t always feel complete when I know there are hungry brothers and sisters out there. I want to feed them all, just do it, plant gorilla gardens everywhere and spread seeds like STI’s around every corner. Though i’m far from being in any epicentre of the hip happenings, I guess the first step is to just act locally, think globally. There are ideas brewing in my head and heart as to how this is possible. I want to let them stew and form themselves better before blurting anything out. But I feel a potential of thought is greatest when actions show themselves to be louder than words.
Now about these muffins, I loathe a dry muffin, honestly I have never enjoyed a wheat muffin except for the ones they make at Dominion Cafe, pear ginger white chocolate, I have to make a paleo version. Normally conventional muffins are so bleck, dry and dense and just blah. Well, not these little pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. Its likely I put way too many chocolate chips in them, speaking of sharing food maybe I can give organic chocolate chips out at halloween instead of GMO candy. I digress, these muffins are excellent, they’re moist, delicately spiced and filled with chocolate. Alongside a cup of coffee, they are like a morning bear hug. The basis of this muffin recipe is borrowed from these delicious blue berry muffins.
You know when you want a brownie, but you don’t want a whole brownie, well that’s where these little bites come in. They satisfy your brownie tooth without going overboard, that is, if you can refrain from eating them all. Really you could without feeling too guilty, since you use dates instead of sugar and they’re totally grain free. I was pretty excited about my latest thrift store score, which was a mini muffin tin, who knew making all things mini could be so fun.
Yes, you guessed it that lovely rose plate was another thrift store score, straight outta grandma’s cabinet. The frosting on these bites could fool Tony the Tiger, its creamy luxurious and spiked with ample vanilla and soft honey notes.
Paleo Bite Sized Brownies with Vanilla Honey Cashew Frosting
Author: Chantelle
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 14
Ingredients
½ C date paste, softened in warm water for a few minutes.
2 Tbs+2 Tbs melted coconut oil
1 egg
2 Tbs cacao powder
1 Tbs coconut flour
½ tsp sea salt
½ C raw cashews, soaked 6-8 hrs
⅓ C water
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbs+ drizzle honey
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350F
Combine the softened date paste, coconut oil and egg.
In a separate bowl combine the cacao powder, coconut flour and salt. Mix into the wet ingredients.
Drop brownie dough by the Tbs. into your mini muffin tin.
Bake for 10 minutes.
In a blender or food processor add the strained cashews, coconut oil, vanilla, honey and a pinch of salt, slowly add the water until the consistency is thick yet spreadable and super smooth and creamy.
When the brownie bites have cooled slightly, spoon a dollop of frosting on top and drizzle with a little extra honey.
Even squash haters like roast squash, especially of the delicata and acorn varieties. When these beauties are in season I like to occupy my entire oven with their sliced presence, roast until their skin bursts golden and adorn every meal with a touch of fall.
Just go ahead and drool all over the computer…it’s okay, really. The star of the show here is the tahini lemon sauce, creamy smooth sesame tahini is such a versatile ingredient. This sauce is not only great on salads and vegetables but also really nice with grilled chicken or white fish, as a dipping sauce for roasted potatoes and yam fries, added to vegetable soups or just smothered on a chunk of sourdough. Make a big batch and save moola on pre made salad dressings, seriously if you are into having a lower grocery bill then you need to start making your own dressings and sauces. The pre made stuff is not only expensive but usually loaded with additives, preservatives and unhealthy oil like canola and soy (yes, even the organic ones!).
Tahini is a power food, it’s higher in protein than most nuts and packed with important minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium (potassi-yum!) and iron. Seeds are a lot easier to digest than nuts, you don’t have to soak them forever to make them more absorbable which is a huge timesaver. Sesame is one of the most nutrient rich seeds you could eat. I sprinkled some black sesame seeds on the salad, which are really high in iron AND they look cool, right?
Roasted Squash Salad with Lemony Tahini Sauce + Feta
Author: Chantelle
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4
You can easily double or triple the recipe and keep a jar of this sauce on hand in the fridge. It lasts about a month. Use whatever fresh local veggies are on hand, this is just what I had available.
Ingredients
1 acorn squash, cut into ½ inch slices
1 delicata squash, cut into ½ inch slices
1 beet, cut into ½ inch slices
a few radishes, sliced
a handful of cherry tomatoes
small chunk of feta
a few handfuls of local greens- lettuces,kale,arugula- you name it!
2 Tbs. Tahini
1 whole lemon, juiced, seeds removed
2 Tbs olive oil
2 garlic cloves
1 Tbs honey
1 tsp worcester sauce or 1 anchovy filet
½ tsp sea salt
generous amount of fresh cracked pepper
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400F
Lay out the squash and beets on a roasting tray and drizzle with a bit of olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt. Bake for 45 min. turning halfway through.
In a blender or food processor, add the tahini, lemon, garlic,honey,worcester, salt and pepper and blend until smooth and creamy.
Assemble the greens on a large plate or in a large mixing bowl, top with your veggies, roasted squash, beet,crumbled feta and a generous amount of tahini sauce.
Have you ever seen anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun, every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills, or the rumpled sea,
and is gone—
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world, like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils, say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance—
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love—
do you think there is anywhere, in any language, a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you, as the sun reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there, empty-handed—
or have you too
turned from this world—
or have you too gone crazy
for power,
for things?
-Mary Oliver
I think in some way we have all gone a little crazy, gotten a little bit (or a lot) lost at times. Forgetting the small miracles that every day brings forth. We are witness to a multitude of miracles within every moment. In such a mad world it’s easy to lose track of what’s really important, how truly blessed we are just to feel the suns kiss on our skin.
Mornings like these, when you permeate a radiant contentment, what do you do? How do you string that zeal along and stretch it out and make it last? For me, I linger softly around the fridge and wonder what I can create to continue the good vibration. The answer is always different, but on this day, it was Huevos Rancheros, a favourite comfort food, that doesn’t have to live solely at the breakfast table. Of course if you know me, my huevos recipe is very non-traditional. Skip the beans, load up some yummy roasted sweet potato, easy grain-free tortillas, roasted tomato sauce spiked with ample amounts of homemade hot sauce, and crumbled feta, all with a generous squeeze of lime and a handful of cilantro. String the good feelings along, make them last, nourish your whole being. That’s the juicy stuff right there.
1-2 whole roasted sweet potatoes, or you could grate it and pan fry for a faster option.
4 whole tomatoes, halved
1 bell pepper, halved
¼ C homemade hot sauce or equivalent mexican hot sauce like cholula or a chipotle
½ tsp cumin seeds
¼ C crumbled feta cheese
handful chopped cilantro
2 lime wedges
sea salt to taste
4 eggs
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400F
Roast sweet potatoes,bell pepper and tomatoes for 45 minutes with a bit of oil and salt
Combine almond flour, tapioca and a pinch of salt
In a separate bowl mix together water and 1 egg, whisk into dry ingredients, the consistency will be quite thin.
Heat a skillet and melt some coconut oil or your preferred cooking fat, when its nice and hot drop batter by the Tbs. to make little tortillas, cook until golden brown on both sides.
Fry or poach your eggs.
When the tomatoes and pepper are ready, pop them into a food processor or blender, add the cumin seeds and a bit of salt and blend until smooth.
Cut the roast sweet potato into chunks and assemble on plates with the tortillas and eggs, pour sauce over the sweet potatoes and garnish with cilantro, feta and lime.
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This post was shared on Fat Tuesday alongside many other nourishing recipes.
Spaguetti squash, and Creamy Pine Mushrooms with Crispy Shallots and Sage is a lovely pine mushroom recipe
We’re fortunate to live in a place with an abundance of wild mushrooms. Many people make a living around these parts picking and selling gourmet wild mushrooms such as Matsutake or Pine mushrooms and Chanterelle. I’ve been learning about foraging for mushrooms for a few years now. There’s a lot to know, you certainly don’t want to take chances when it comes to mushroom identification. That being said, I know a lot of people are afraid of picking mushrooms, fear not! There are a multitude of great reference books, online forums, and most areas have local experts who can help you to learn your regions edible mushrooms. There are few things I enjoy more than finding delicious wild mushrooms in their natural habitat, it’s like finding gold!
The white mushrooms are pine and the orange are lobster- also a delicious and easy to identify edible mushroom
Matsutake and Pine mushroom are terms often used interchangeably, but in actuality they aren’t the same mushroom, although the taste and appearance are very similar. Matsutake mushrooms grow in Japan and Korea, although very rare. Here in the Pacific Northwest, what we sometimes refer to as Matsutake, are actually Pine mushrooms and they are different, though commercially picked Pine mushrooms are mainly sent to Japan. Some say a perfect specimen can cost up to 100$, for one mushroom! Around here they still fetch a handsome price of about 22$/lb.
Hsiao-Ching Chou wrote, “The matsutake resembles the truffle, which lends its perfume to any preparation it encounters. A broth with several slices of a pine mushroom would be served in a lidded bowl or pot, for example, so that the scent of earthy pine with a tinge of cinnamon swirls within the container until it is finally released.”
“These edible mushrooms are prized in Japan, both for their flavor and meaning. To this day they’re still given as important gifts, meant to symbolize fertility and happiness One of the earliest records of Japanese matsutake is a 759 A.D. poem celebrating its virtues. ” This proved true when I gifted some Japanese friends with a bag of pines. The acclamation I received was beyond my expectations. They took big whiffs of the mushroom filled bag, their faces beaming with the smile of a mycophile. One last thing- the aroma of the of the matsutake is absolutely incomparable to any other mushroom. They are potent and unmistakable, once you’ve smelled one you will not forget. David Arora, author of Mushrooms Demystified (the BEST North American guide to wild mushrooms), describes the smell of a matsutake as a combination of wet socks and red hots. It’s a cinnamon, pine, wet forest soil smell that is just absolutely narcotic in my humble opinion. Cooking with such an ingredient is a dream, every few minutes I stop and just smell, breathing in the forests underground essence, it’s truly intangible.
We harvested quite the bounty, and let me tell you I have been noshing on mushrooms all week long. Thou shall not waste! I’ve cooked with pine mushrooms in many different ways. I try to keep it simple, this recipe is one of my favourites, the broth is infused with pine mushroom essence and a touch of cream. The crispy shallots and sage offer a robust combination of tastes on top of the creamy mushroom sauce. Spaguetti squash is so lovely this time of year and keeps things light but regular pasta is delicious as well.
This recipe is for 2 large portions or 4 smaller portions, It's also delicious alongside some grilled chicken or fish!
Ingredients
1 medium sized spaguetti squash, cut in half, seeds removed
drizzle of olive oil
3-4 medium sized pine mushrooms- alternately you could use your favourite mushroom, thinly sliced
2 Tbs butter or ghee
1 shallot, thinly sliced
20 sage leaves
1 C chicken stock
⅓ C heavy cream or coconut cream
1 Tbs tapioca starch
fresh cracked pepper and salt to taste
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400F
Place squash open side up on a baking sheet with a drizzle of olive oil. Bake for 1 hour.
In a skillet or frying pan melt 1 Tbs butter and add a touch of olive oil, get it nice and hot and bubbling and then add the shallots and sage leaves, turn the heat down a bit and let them get nice and golden brown before stirring. About 10 minutes.
In a separate saucepan add another Tbs of butter and let it get nice and hot, add the mushrooms and cover for 2 minutes.
Add the chicken stock and let the mushrooms simmer for 5 minutes.
Mix the cold cream with tapioca starch and add to the mushrooms. If you're using coconut cream, mix the tapioca with 1 Tbs of cold water and add to the mushrooms.
Add a generous amount of fresh cracked pepper and sea salt.
Remove the insides of the spaghetti squash with a fork, cover with the mushroom sauce and top with crispy shallots and sage.
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Check out Fat Tuesday a collection of amazing links to recipes and articles, I’m submitting this recipe over there too!
I’m totally open to answering any and all wild mushroom questions you may have. Happy foraging!
Hey I'm Chantelle, my alter ego would be a mermaid if I wasn't such a terrible swimmer. I love writing authentically and cooking in my pyjamas. My favourite pastimes include eating avocados, travelling the world and hanging out with a toddler.
