What Do You Do With A Can Of Sardines In Hot Tomato Sauce?

My youngest who still lives at home, on and off, recently left to go to Europe for a writing trip. He also left a bunch of laundry, a dirty room and a can of these:

He and I are both huge seafood lovers, his dad, not so much. I woke up this morning hungry and wondering what I could do with those sardines. We desperately need to go grocery shopping and frankly there is not a lot of food in the house. We have staples but we do not use a lot of convenience foods, I consider these sardines a convenience food because technically you can eat them right out of the can. The majority of food we eat we prepare ourselves and we carry our food with us when eating away from home. 

I am going grocery shopping today, and since I need to eat before I go, I'm putting this meal in the category of "what to eat when the pantry is practically empty" or "how to eat what's on hand". I'm sort of finicky about my food, I won't eat just anything. I want it to taste great or better than great, look very appealing, and be healthy. I think this dish fits the bill.

Sauté a small, sliced, yellow onion in a little Avocado oil.

Add the sardines and sauce and gently boil to reduce the sauce, turn the sardines gently to heat them through.

Once the sauce is reduced, top with eggs and place under the broiler on high for a minute or two until the eggs are set.

Enjoy!

Hubby said they were interesting, which isn't a glowing endorsement, but he did finish his breakfast.

I loved them, next time I will add a little citrus juice (lemon or lime) and hot sauce, the "Hot Tomato Sauce" was not very hot.

Collards

I purchased these beauties at the Raleigh Farmers Market. If you've never made collards before, it's pretty easy to do. For those who have been making collards for years, skip this post, yours probably taste fantastic and you don't need to do anything different.

Start by washing your collards. They are usually really clean when you purchase them, I remember when my grandmother had to wash them several times with plenty of changes of water because they were so sandy. Even if they are clean give them a good rinse, if you are buying them already pre-chopped and bagged from the grocery store you can skip this and the next few steps.

Remove the stem and spine from each leaf.

Stack several leaves and roll tightly from the stem end

Slice the roll and you will get collard ribbons, it is quicker to just chop them but this is how I grew up eating them and I prefer them this way. I think they look pretty this way and have a better mouth feel and texture when eating.

Melt a couple of tablespoons of fat in a stock pot, I've used bacon grease, olive oil in a pinch and coconut oil. Here I'm using coconut oil, my grandmother used fat back, I have no problem with the idea, I've just never cooked with fat back before and am not sure how to go about it.

 

Slice a large onion and sauté until tender.

Place your collards on top of the onions and add your seasonings. This is one large bundle of greens, it filled 3/4 of the pot. Add sea salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes and garlic powder. Include 4 cups of water. I do not like to add too much water, my grandmother used much more but I prefer for them to steam more than boil.

Once the water is boiling, place the lid on and lower the heat to medium, cook for 40 min until the greens are tender.

Yum!

Broccoli Salad - Debbie style

I used Paula Deen's recipe but made a few changes; I blanched the broccoli a couple of minutes (raw broccoli and I don't mix well), I used stevia instead of sugar and pecans instead of raisins. Came out delish!
Here is the recipe I altered;
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/broccoli-salad-recipe.html

Cheesy Spinach-Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

Quick and easy dinner idea.

I'm sorry the picture just doesn't do them justice, they were way more delicious than they look here.

Ingredients

4 large Portobello Mushrooms

2 yellow onions, sliced

1/4 cup coconut oil

2 cups frozen spinach

1 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

4 oz. cream cheese)

2 oz. crumbled feta cheese

sea salt and pepper to taste.

Turn oven broiler to high.

Rinse tops of mushrooms and remove any debris. Wipe with a paper towel. Remove and chop just the stems and set them aside. 

Place mushroom caps top side up on a tray and broil for 5 min. Then turn them over and broil another 5 min. This will draw the moisture out, make sure the mushrooms are not so close to the broiler that they burn. Once they are done remove them from the oven and set aside.

Sauté the onions in the coconut oil until golden (not browned) and then add the spinach, chopped stems, nutmeg and cayenne, continue sautéing. Once the spinach is tender turn down the heat and add the cream cheese. Once the cream cheese has been completely mixed in, season with salt and pepper to taste.

Place the mushroom caps on their tops and fill the well with the onion/spinach mixture. Top with feta cheese and place the filled caps back under the broiler until the feta is lightly browned. 

Enjoy, and make sure you share!

Yogurt "Cream Cheese"

We eat a lot of cream cheese, and I mean a lot.

Since it is such a big part of our every day diet, I wanted it to be as healthy as possible so I decided to make it myself. It is unbelievable how simple this is. Here is what you need: 

1 quart organic whole milk yogurt

A bowl

Cheese cloth 

Some string

I scalded the cheese-cloth in boiling water after cutting it to the size I wanted. Lay the cheese-cloth in the bowl and dump in the yogurt. Gather up the sides and tie with the string, then hand the yogurt over the bowl. I used the knob of one of my kitchen cabinets. 

After 24 hours, this is what it looks like:

Add a little sea salt and mix gently, do not use a food processor to mix, a fork will do.

Use as you would regular cream cheese.

If you want an idea of what to use all that left over whey in, see the Mayo recipe.

Lacto-fermented Mayonnaise

This is a recipe from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.

Ingredients:

1 pastured whole egg, at room temperature

1 egg yolk, at room temperature

1 teaspoon Dijon-type mustard

1 ½ tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon whey

¾ – 1 cup extra virgin olive oil

Generous pinch sea salt

Mix the egg, egg yolk, mustard, lemon juice, whey and sea salt.  Blend for 30 seconds. I used a hand blender but you could use your food processor.

Add the olive oil very slowly! Drizzle it to a very thin stream, do not pour it in! I only needed 3/4 of olive oil. Add more if needed.

Taste to see if you want more sea salt and lemon juice.

If you added the whey, set the mayonnaise on the counter, covered, for 7 hours, and then refrigerate.  It needs this time to activate the lacto-fermentation.  It should keep for several months in the refrigerator.  Without whey, use the mayonnaise up within 2 weeks. 

What I used some of my Mayo for; Salmon Salad

I used some left over broiled salmon, pull off the skin:

Break it into very small pieces 

Add mayo and seasonings to taste, I like to add minced onion, dill, salt and pepper.

Top some sprouted bread with baby greens and your delicious salad, yummy!

Lamb Stuffed Acorn Squash

We love Winter Squash, but we mostly stick with Spagetti and Butternut Squash. I ventured out a little and decided to use Acorn which I have only prepared a couple of times. I saw a stuffed Acorn squash recipe recently but I didn't take the time to see what they stuffed it with, I just thought the picture looked delicious. I choose to stuff it with lamb because I could season it with spices I thought would be complementary with the Acorn squash, it was!

Ingredients:

2 Acorn Squash

1 pound ground lamb

1 large onion, finely chopped

2 tbsp organic worchestershire sauce 

1 tsp sea salt, plus a little.

1 tsp cinnamon 

1 tsp cardamom 

1/2 tsp nutmeg, plus a little.

1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper

1/2 tsp chili pepper flakes

Cut squash in half from top to bottom, scoop out the seeds and season with a little sea salt and nutmeg. 

Mix the lamb with the rest of the ingredients and stuff in the acorn halves.

Place in baking pan, I used aluminum foil to "cup" them so they would sit up straight.

Bake in a 375 degree F oven until the lamb registers 155 degrees F, approximately 1 hour.

These were delicious, but I revisited this recipe and made the following changes:

1. I roasted the halves cut side down for 40 minutes in 375 degree oven.

2. While the halves were roasting, I browned the onions in a little coconut oil, added the meat and seasonings plus 1 tsp of Garam Marsala and browned the meat throughly. Lastly, I turned the heat down to low and put a lid on the pan until the acorn squash was done.

3. Once the squash was cooked, carefully scoop out as much flesh as you can without destroying the shell (you will not remove all of the squash because the shell is very thin).

4. Mix the flesh with the meat mixture and refill the the shells.

5. Top with goat cheese and place in the oven on broil until the cheese is browned a little.

This tastes even better than the original and is a lot simpler.