There aren’t many kids who don’t like lollies. Granted I know a few littlies who don’t have a taste for them yet, but they’re few and far between. If you can make nutritious treats at home, without the refined sugar, additives, colours and nasty fats, no lolly-loving kid has to go without. With gelatin being such a great gut-building food, a gelatin based treat becomes health promoting as well as yummy.
My kids love jelly, even in its simple, straightforward form. I normally set fruity herbal teas, or lemongrass tea infused with ginger and turmeric syrup into a jelly firm enough to cut into squares and pick up. But I lose so much fridge space keeping pans of jelly squares on hand. Enter homemade jubes- more gelatin means they can stay out at room temperature (although untested in the height of a Queensland summer yet!).
Seeing as lemons are a plenty in the garden right now, these are the ones we made today.
Ingredients:
6 tablespoons grass-fed gelatin (I use Great lakes)
2/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1-1.5 tablespoons raw honey (or to taste)
Optional extras– Food colouring (I use Hopper- a non-toxic, vegetable-based food coloring), and/or a few drops of lemon extract or food grade lemon oil (if you like it sour!)
How to:
Whisk lemon juice, honey and gelatin in a sauce pan until there are no lumps.
Heat gently over a low heat until it’s warm, thin and evenly melted/combined
Add food coloring and/or essential oil if desired (here’s where you can split the batch and make a few colors to excite the kids)
Pour into ice cube trays or silicone molds. If you don’t have any molds just pour it into a flat-bottomed glass pyrex dish and cut into squares or use a cookie cutter after it’s set.
Pour in the mixture, then pop in the fridge for 10 minutes or so to firm up. Remove from the molds and assuming there’s any left after the kids spot them, they’ll keep at room temperature in a sealed jar.
You could easily substitute lime juice or orange juice or any other juices you like- you may just need to adjust the honey down when using these sweeter juices.
Something I think we all should be consuming are stocks and broths. Everyone. Regardless of your current symptoms, a cast iron gut, or that “it’s stinking hot in the middle of summer”, we all benefit from these nourishing foods. And those with digestive symptoms, food allergies or intolerances, eczema, joint stiffness and arthritis should really, really, really consider adding them into your diet.
Why? Because a good stock is medicine- cheap, homemade, delicious medicine. Bone broths are extremely rich in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants as well as gelatin, free amino acids such as proline and glycine, collagen and glucosamine. They are incredibly healing on the body; fortifying for the immune system, soothing and enhancing for digestion and nourish everything related to collagen (joints, tendons, ligaments, skin, mucus membranes and bone). Did I mention they are healing for your gut? Just checking.
A couple of months ago the kids and I were fortunate enough to go and visit a certified organic farm, with pasture-raised beef and pork. This is the farm from which we’re hoping to buy our meat (first delivery comes this week and we’re super excited!). It’s a family owned and run farm a few hours from Brisbane, out towards Toowoomba. One of my clients is part of a GAPS community that have been sourcing their meat from here for some time and the group had organsied to go out and see where their meat comes from, meet the owners and play in the dirt, building good immunity! I was so lucky to hear of the trip a few days before it happened and even managed to car pool there with another couple of ladies whom I hadn’t met before that day!
After a couple of hours driving we arrived at the farm just in time to follow the ute packed with curious children and parents out to check out the cattle and calves! Insert lots of excited squeals from the munchkins at this stage.
Then it was off to check out their pasture-raised pork. The first sow we visited was in early labour! Nothing was happening just yet but the poor darling was close. So close in fact that they took the kids back a few hours later to see if there had been any progress but to no avail. Harp was desperate to see the piglets come, I think we would have missed them by a few hours at most.
Fortunately for the kids, a few others had piglets already a bit higher up, so we went to visit them. The piglets were very inquisitive and happy to come over to the kids for a closer look.
A wonderful campsite was set up for lunch under the trees, complete with billy tea and a homemade port-a-loo with a tarp for privacy. We all tucked into the picnic lunches we’d packed and tasted some of the meat on offer. The storm we had been watching from afar began threaten and we had to move. Not enough rain in the end to do more than settle the dust but it came complete with a lightening show!
As the sun came out again the kids were back outside to chase chickens, climb, explore and revisit the laboring sow. A fantastic day all in all and there were multiple children, mine included, complaining they didn’t want to go home!
I’m very excited to be getting out first delivery of meat this week and cannot wait to be eating meat from a place I’ve visited, where I’ve seen the animals and know the story from pasture to my plate. It’s so rare these days for most of us to have any connection with where or how our food comes to us, let alone have a direct connection with the growers. We’ve been sourcing our grass-fed lamb for some time from another small family where we see the breeders at pick up and cannot wait to say the same for our beef and pork too!
Iron deficiency has been a bit of a problem around here- for me and also my little man. Not surprising really with the spate of digestive trouble he had as we tirelessly tried to work out the unique set of foods triggering his gut. Since the offending foods have been removed and his gut is slowly repairing his iron levels have bounced back up again. With stronger digestion behind us, I’m determined to cover our needs through our food as the bottle of iron tablets slowly runs out.
Enter Pâté. Well actually, enter liver, however pâté seemed the most likely way I’d get it in to any of us in a hurry. Liver has been on my mental “to cook” list for awhile. It’s packed with iron, has double the folate than spinach for the same weight, is a great source of B vitamins and is one of the few foods that contain Vitamin D and preformed vitamin A. You can see why it’s long been recommended for pregnant women!
To me liver is an important food for everyone- it’s deeply nourishing and is a great blood building food for kids. It’s worth learning to like. Like all new foods you may need to try it more than once to acquire a taste for it, especially the kiddies. Or if you’re like me you already love pâté, you’ve just never made it before.
Being new to making pâté, some googling was in order. It seemed easy enough in method- “just don’t over cook the liver” was the recurrent message, or grainy pâté would be the result. So I though perhaps I’d try to find a recipe for my favourite commercial pâté- Maggie Beer’s Pheasant Farm pâté. Amazingly there is a replica recipe floating around however I didn’t have any of the three (yes three) different varieties of alcohol in it and didn’t fancy buying them all. (I’m determined I’ll make this one day though, I even bought the Juniper berries at the markets on Sunday)
Then I found this one, and all I needed to buy was brandy.
Easy. As I tend to do, I altered it a little and this is what I came up with.
Chicken Liver Pâté
Ingredients
1kg chicken livers
750g organic butter, diced
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 brown shallots or 1 onion, finely chopped
small bunch fresh thyme leaves
150ml brandy
1/2tsp grated nutmeg
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
100g extra butter, for topping
Method
1. Trim the chicken livers of any stringy sinews, then rinse them and gently pat dry with kitchen paper.
2. Melt a third of the butter in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the shallots and cook, stirring, for about 4 minutes, or until softened, then add in the garlic and cook for another minute or two.
3. Add the livers and thyme, and cook, stirring frequently, for about 3-4 minutes, or until the livers are coloured on the outside but pink in the center. Pour in the brandy, cook for an extra 10 seconds, then add the remaining butter and nutmeg to the pan.
4. Set aside for a few minutes for the butter to soften, then puree the mixture in batches in a blender until smooth.
5. Press the pâté through a fine sieve for a silky smooth result or leave as is if you don’t mind a rougher texture. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
6. Spoon the pâté into your chosen dish/dishes and chill. Melt the extra butter and pour a little over the pâté to create an airtight seal. Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours before eating.
To serve eat straight from the fridge or if you think of it in advance- pull the pâté out and allow to warm up for around 20 mins- this will help the butter seal soften as well as the flavours of the pâté to shine though. Serve with your choice of bread, hot toast or crackers- my favourite are the grain-free almond meal crackers I make or toasted sourdough bread. it’s also delicious with sprouted breads or slices of fresh cucumber.
Granted this makes a bucket load of pâté. Well actually it makes 4 ramekins and 2 Chinese containers full of pâté- however much that is. It’ll keep for up to a week once the seal has been cracked and 2 weeks with the butter seal locking the air out. Apparently you can also freeze it without affecting the taste or texture so I have but you’ll probably need to check back for the verdict.
Most of us love a little sweetness in our diets, some more than others! Sugar is a primary fuel for the body and in its natural, complex form can be enjoyed as part of a balanced diet. Complex unrefined sugars still contain valuable minerals and fibre, such as iron-rich molasses, so the body naturally prefers their slow releasing energy and health-supportive properties.
Why avoid white sugar, refined sugars?
The problem with sugar begins when it’s refined. Sugar is generally encased and held within more complex forms and when eaten in this form it’s released slowly as the food is broken down. When it is refined and separated from the valuable minerals and fibre, this pure (bleached) sucrose is like high-octane fuel for the body. It burns rapidly, over stimulating the pancreas to release insulin and leaching minerals (calcium in particular) from bones. Along with being devoid of important nutrients, consumption of refined conventional sugar cause the body to use up its stores of vitamins and minerals struggling to digest those sugars!
White, raw and brown sugars are basically highly refined sugar cane juice, with colors and, in the case of light and dark brown sugars, some of the molasses added back to the refined white sugar.
Sugar and sweetness can be an enjoyable and nutritional part of your diet if you choose the right kinds and consume even the good ones in moderation.
Did you know a lot of commercial vanilla extracts or essences can contain corn syrup, glycerin, fructose, propylene glycol and preservatives? There are some better ones on the market but you need to read your labels well!
However making your own is simple, and cheaper too- it costs a little to get the first one going but the price of 3 beans and some vodka gives you a full 250ml good quality vanilla extract! A true vanilla extract will impart a more beautiful flavour too- and I’m all about flavour in cooking!
This recipe evolved out of the desire to offer a dairy, gluten and egg-free friend a scrumptious dessert (that wasn’t just another cake or muffin I adapted). I wanted something that could look a little bit fancy on a plate too if you dressed it up right, so it could stand up to a dinner party standard. My dessert workshop participants have since enjoyed it’s presence on the menu too!
Sandi Cooper Naturopathy 