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Sugar Plums and Other Sweet Holiday Treats

sugarplums

Another recent Traditional Community Kitchen meetup I attended recently focused on healthy holiday treats – sweet things that contain unrefined, natural sweeteners, with flavors appropriate for the season. This event was seriously calling my name when I first saw it, as I have a major sweet tooth and have struggled with sugar for a long time (my struggles continue, but I’m working on it).

One way I deal with my bully of a sweet tooth is to still eat sweet treats but eat those made with natural sweeteners. That means maple syrup, honey, sucanat, and coconut sugar. I don’t eat much stevia, but I do like it in some cases. I also love to eat refrigerated medjool dates – keeping them in the fridge solidifies them a bit and gives them the texture similar to chewy caramel. It’s become a favorite treat of mine over the years.

By the way, dates are also great stuffed with cream cheese, wrapped in prosciutto and baked until the meat crisps up. Sweet, tangy, and smokey all in one little snack – perfect!

Anyway, my love of dates leads me to my new love of sugar plums. Yes, sugar plums – the treat of the same name from A Visit From St. Nicholas (The children were nestled all snug in their beds/While visions of sugar plums danc’d in their heads.). One of the main ingredients of sugar plums is dates, and I think that’s why I like them so much.

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Final Hellgate CSA Share of 2011

Final Week of 2011

So, last Tuesday was our final Hellgate CSA distribution of 2011. I won’t deny that it will be strange not picking up later tonight. What we got last week was:

1 bunch lacinato kale
1 celeriac
1 pound carrots
1 pound rutabagas
1 head cauliflower
1 bag sunchokes

I’ve eaten half the kale and carrots. The sunchokes were used for carrot-sunchoke fritters. Celeriac for remoulade. Rutabagas will be for roasting, as will the cauliflower.

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Grain-Free Meatballs

meatballs ready to eat

Lately, I’ve gone to a number of meetups with the Traditional Community Kitchen. This is an official Meetup group based in NYC, and one that I help organize (I’m a Co-Organizer and to some extent the Social Media Manager). It’s been one of the most fun social groups I’ve been a part of in NYC, and I’ve met some delightful people there that have become friends. Everyone is really friendly and eager to both teach what they know and learn from each other.

If you are in the NYC area, and interested in cooking together – whether your orientation is WAPF, paleo/primal, grain- or gluten-free, vegetarian, or simply an overall curious person looking for more inspiration to eat whole, real food – I highly recommend joining this group and coming to one of our meetups!

So, one of the most recent meetups was actually a repeat event – making a big pot of meatballs. This recipe was originally developed by Hannah Springer here in NYC, and she shared it with one of our meetup members, who passed it on to the rest of us. We’ve all really enjoyed the resulting delicious savory meatballs (which I like to make on the smaller side), enough so to make them together again.

They are different from any other recipe I’ve seen for meatballs, in that they are free of grains. Essentially, they are all meat, with the addition of egg, cream, and a few other things. I’m not personally avoiding grains, but for those omnivores that are, this is a great recipe

I remember the first event – which took place at my home – to be really fun. This second event was a lot of fun, too, and held at another member’s home.  The four of us chopped onions and I was glad to talk about my favorite way of chopping onions, which I’m happy to say sped up the chopping process – chopping onions can be a painful experience, so getting through them as fast as possible is a real benefit.

We then mixed those onions with spices and some pastured lard, and fried ’em up. You can only imagine how wonderful the house started to smell while this was going on.

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Pastured Pulled Pork

Recently, I had the opportunity learn a bit about butchering a pig – how to take it apart and turn it into the various cuts you see in the market (or at the farmer’s market). A friend who has excellent knife skills and some butchering experience led the workshop, and was really great about explaining what the different cuts were.

We lucked out and had half a local pastured pig for the workshop, and I was also fortunate to be able to take home a piece of the shoulder cut, a boneless blade roast. This roast had quite the fat layer on it.

pork blade roast

Make that a delicious fat layer. Over the many hours it cooked, the fat basted the meat – and some dripped into the pan, leaving me some wonderful lard for future cooking.  Then there was the disintegration of any connective tissue during the long roasting process, making for meat that really just fell apart. It was a truly tasty transformation.

But first, I created a marinade for the meat.

pork marinade

In it was garlic, oregano, salt, ground grains of paradise, citrus juice, apple cider vinegar, and a little bit of bacon fat (for viscosity). I used grains of paradise – a species in the ginger family with a peppery flavor – because I ran out of regular black pepper.

After I created the marinade, I put it on the meat and let it sit for an hour in a glass pan, covered in plastic wrap, in the fridge, and then 30 minutes on the counter, warming up a bit.

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Swapping Russian Gingerbread Thumbprint Cookies

Blogger Cookie Swap 2011 CollageThis year I did something a little unusual for me – I participated in a cookie swap… The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, to be exact. This was the inaugural swap. I traded cookies with some bloggers I didn’t know – there was a little mystery to it, but I enjoyed that aspect of it. Not to mention the promise of cookies. My verdict – super fun!

I came across this cookie swap via a link on Facebook – the swap is run by Lindsay of Love & Olive Oil and Julie of The Little Kitchen. So, I went to their site, filled out the form and expressed one preference – that the cookies be made with natural sweeteners. I was fortunate to be paired up with people that were open to this preference, and I got two out of three dozen cookies that worked with that preference. They both used coconut sugar, which is very cool.

The first cookies I received were from Anna. She made these absolutely delicious chocolate mint shortbread cookies in fun shapes – fluted circles and stars. They were made with coconut sugar and were decorated with a high cacao content chocolate, too. I loved how they were packaged in a pretty Christmas tin, complete with a beautiful handmade card. Chocolate and mint is one of my very favorite combinations, so this was a serious treat.

Then Kiri’s cookies arrived – cinnamon spiced butterscotch chip pecan cookies. These were made with coconut palm sugar and stevia and were very tasty. I loved them with a cup of chai tea – a perfect combination. I also have a long standing love of butterscotch chips – not the most nutrient dense of foods, but they hold special memories for them, so I smile whenever I eat something that contains them.

Finally, Suzanne’s cookies arrived – cocoa fudge cookies. While they weren’t made with natural sugars, they were made with quality ingredients and a surprise – thick greek yogurt in place of the egg. While you know I do not shy away from eggs, I loved the moistness the yogurt provided in these cookies. They were very rich and chocolaty tasting. My boyfriend loved them, too. They were perfect with a glass of raw milk.

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