I am on a break from blogging and teaching while I work on some new possibilities. Come back soon, I promise to be back with some exciting announcements!
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I am on a break from blogging and teaching while I work on some new possibilities. Come back soon, I promise to be back with some exciting announcements!
I’m thrilled to announce that we will be hosting a food swap and potluck here on June 24th in honor of Kate Payne, author of The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking and founder of the Brooklyn and Austin food swaps. The lovely ladies at PDX Swappers co-host and I’m so grateful for their swap organization finesse! Space is limited and going fast. You must fill out this form to reserve your spot.
Kinda funny to see Lost Arts Kitchen mentioned in a magazine that would probably never publish one of my animal-fat laden recipes, but totally awesome to be included in this round-up of businesses that make Portland “one of the most exciting food towns in the country.” (See reason #2.)
What I hope to illustrate with the following meal plan for next week’s Seven Days 100% Local challenge isn’t so much that there are many delicious fresh foods you can pick up at the farmers market this weekend. There are, but in my experience, eating locally in a manner one can sustain not just for a week, but year-round, requires more than what farmers can harvest in any given week. Preserving food at home or buying locally grown and preserved foods keeps it local while keeping your wallet and your taste buds happy.
Some tips
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

Asparagus, Stinging Nettle, Salami, and German Butterball Potato Quiche-to-Be
The Seven Days 100% Local challenge calls for 100% local eating for the week of April 18th. We’re participating, sorta. In honor of the challenge and Earth Day, I’ll be blogging for the next week about eating local.
Contrarian that I am, I’ll start off with a bit about what what my family does not eat local, as well as what we do. In the coming days, I’ll share a meal plan for the week based on what’s available here in Portland now, information about sourcing affordable local food, and preservation methods that make eating year-round tasty and nutritious.
While I am an advcoate of local eating, I personally don’t follow a 100% local diet and while the 100% local challenge is an interesting one, I know we won’t follow all the rules for next week’s challenge. For my family, eating local is an everyday, year-round practice and in order to keep us all happy, I cook with some select foods from afar. Here are my exceptions and reasoning.
The local foods we eat:
That’s a lot of foods! I couldn’t say for sure how much of our diet is local on a weekly basis, but I’d guess about 75-80% of our calories come from within 100 miles. Many of the farms I buy from are less than 30 miles from our home. Oregon’s awesome that way
While I’d like to get even more local foods into our diet, I’m pretty satisfied with where we’re at at this point. Considering that less than 10% of American meals are made from local foods, getting to even 50% of calories from within 100 miles would be a huge breakthrough. So, rather than encourage you to eat 100% local and then give up in frustration or culinary boredom, I’d like you to see what local eating can look like in my next post about a week of local-based meals, and learn how to get your own affordable, local food, which I’ll cover in subsequent posts.
You know all about the health benefits of lactofermented foods like sauerkraut–how it aids digestion, replenishes essential gut flora, boosts the immune system–but maybe you’re nervous about leaving food out on the counter for several days or maybe you’ve tried making sauerkraut or pickles before and not gotten the results you expected. In my classes and on various email lists, I frequently hear tales of sauerkraut woe. Moldy, soggy, stinky (in the wrong way), sad kraut. The thing is, I’ve been making it for years and even early on, I’ve never had a kraut go wrong. I doubt I’m some sort of mad kraut genius, but I have a feeling that there is something about the combination of ingredients and method I use that’s making a difference. I’m not sure which of these are key, but here are some possible reasons for my kraut success:
With all that in mind, here’s how I recently began a large batch of sauerkraut.
Sauerkraut
Makes about 3 gallons
3 tablespoons juniper berries
3 tablespoons finely minced ginger
3 tablespoons chopped baby dill
3 tablespoons caraway seeds
9 tablespoons sea salt
15 pounds green cabbage
Using a mortar and pestle (or, in this case, mortar and short end of a kraut pounder), lightly crush the juniper berries.
Chop the cabbage as coarsely or finely as you like. I like some big pieces in mine.
Place half of one chopped cabbage in a large, flat bottomed vessel. Sprinkle 1-1/2 teaspoons each of juniper berries, caraway, ginger, and dill and a scant tablespoon of salt over the cabbage. You could also mix the seeds, ginger, dill and salt together and sprinkle about 2 tablespoons of the mixture over each layer.
Using a kraut pounder, the end of a rolling dowel, your fist, a meat tenderizer, a mug, or some other flat object, press and pound on the cabbage for a minute.
Repeat with each cabbage half. By the time you are finished, there should be an accumulation of brine in the kraut-to-be.
You can walk away for an hour or so while more brine accumulates, or you can start packing the cabbage into your fermenting vessel now. Press down hard as you pack layers of cabbage into a jar or crock. To keep the cabbage covered with brine, weigh it with something that just fits inside your vessel. Short, narrow-mouth half-pint jam jars fit well inside wide-mouth canning jars or find a plate or bowl to nestle inside your crock. Fill the jar or bowl with water as needed to keep it from floating. Below, I have put a shallow bowl inside the crock and let the brine partially fill the bowl, though I may pour that back into the crock as the cabbage re-absorbed the brine.
Cover the crock with a plate (if you’re lucky enough to have a crock that still has its lid, use that of course) or loosely tighten a lid on the jar if that’s what you’re using.
This time of year, I let sauerkraut ferment on my counter for four days, checking it daily to see that the cabbage is still covered with brine. I then place the fermented cabbage in canning jars, again pressing it well as I pack it, and store the jars in the fridge. Kraut continues to ferment in the fridge and develops more complex flavors over time. I like to let mine sit for a couple weeks in the fridge. Some folks swear kraut isn’t worth eating ’til it’s at least six months old. It will keep for months and I’ve even experimentally left jars in my fridge for over a year to find still crunchy, delicious kraut.
As you finish a jar, be sure to get a new one started. Once you’ve gotten used to having homemade kraut around, you won’t want to be without it!
Some ways to use your kraut:
I posted recently on my other blog about the new breakfast-in-a-muffin I’ve been experimenting with in an effort to reign in my usual lengthy breakfast prep routine. Well, the muffins are great, but I still like my morning routine, especially now that the weather’s so fine and the garden is starting to produce some of my favorite breakfast veggies. I wanted to show you around my garden a bit, entice you to try a big breakfast yourself, and also tell you about one of my tricks to make this elaborate breakfast a wee simpler to prepare.
Kale, especially the tender young leaves and flower buds, is one of my favorites to saute with onions in the morning, but my very favorite, wait-for-it-all-year-and-gorge-throughout-the-season vegetable is asparagus. Looks like we’ll be eating that within a week.
I cut a few leaves and flower buds and head back inside.
Before I stepped out to get kale and admire the asparagus, I began gently reheating some pre-cooked pork patties and frying onions on the stove. I add the chopped kale to the onions and cook them for a few minutes, just long enough to soften the stems and bring out their color.
I found a couple eggs.
Fried them up in a bit of ghee and sprinkled them with a bit of Old Bay and sea salt.
And breakfast is served. With breakfast like this, I’m full, but not stuffed, and don’t get hungry again until 2 or 3 o’clock. Skipping lunch has become my new norm.
Without taking pictures, this nutritious breakfast takes me just minutes to make, thanks to the pork patties, which I make and cook in 10 pound batches. I love this recipe, made with plenty of sage and rosemary from our backyard and enough pepper to give them a bit of zing, yet not so much that the kids can’t enjoy them. I call these “perfect” because it took me several batches to get them just right. I hope you’ll try them and enjoy them as much as we do.

Luc with about half of the 10 pouds of pork patties we prepared together. I use my KitchenAid to mix the meat and seasonings.
Perfect Pre-cooked Pork Patties
Yields about 50 patties
2 12-inch sprigs of fresh rosemary or 3 teaspoon dry rosemary
8 tops–a good handful–of fresh sage or 3 tablespoons dry sage
3 tablespoons fennel seed, ground
3 tablespoons dried basil
1 tablespoon thyme
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
3 tablespoons sea salt
1 tablespoon ground black pepper
10 pounds ground pork
Preheat oven to 400F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat. Finely chop the rosemary and sage with a knife or in a food processor. Mix thoroughly with remaining seasonings. You should have approximately 1 cup altogether. Divide the herb mixture into four equal portions, about 1/4 cup each. Put 2-1/2 pounds of sausage in the bowl of a stand mixer, add one portion of herb mixture, and turn the mixer on low until the meat and herbs are thoroughly mixed. Remove meat and set aside in an extra large bowl. Repeat with the remaining meat and herb mixture.
Form patties using about 3-4 ounces of meat in each. Keep them all about the same size so they cook evenly. Place them close together on baking sheet. Bake for about 40 minutes, until just brown. Remove from oven and cool on a rack. Refrigerate or freeze and reheat as needed.