A yummy meal from late winter (I go through phases of taking photos of food and haven't done so of late): pork belly, cooked greens, sauteed butternut squash, and fried farm eggs.
This weekend, I spent some time making a fall meal rotation for our household. I’ve tried to do this before and quickly stopped following along, because our diet just didn’t fit a rotation format (or so I thought). It was too seasonal, changing all the time, and there were pieces that just didn’t make sense in that format. But in the last year, our eating habits have simplified a lot. We have a few “formulas” for meals that we mix up by changing the kind of vegetables, meat, and flavorings.
I thought I’d share some of our standard “formulas” since we eat a lot of vegetables in our house, and folks are always look for ideas. By the way, by “a lot,” I mean heaps and loads. The main task when I prepare dinner is chopping. All those vegetables. Chopping chopping chopping. Stir stir stir. Chop some more.
Our diet may also be of interest because we don’t eat what some call a “Standard American Diet.” To be specific, we don’t eat any grains, few carbohydrates (aside from veggies and a bit of fruit), sugar, or processed foods (which we would say include things like vegetable oils, except for olive oil). Also, we flaunt current conventional wisdom by eating a lot of fat — we aim to have fat and carbohydrates from vegetables make up our bodies’ fuel sources (rather than carbohydrates from grains and sugars, as is the case in the Standard American Diet — you can read more about this difference here and here). Our basic combination at any meal is fat (butter, lard, etc.), heaps of vegetables (TONS!), and an animal protein (some kind of meat, wild caught fish, or eggs). It’s been fun to shift more of our diet to farm grown foods along with our Full Diet CSA members, and our diet helps us feature those items on our plates. Seriously, we feel like we are eating the best parts of our old diet (which had a lot of grains as filler). It’s awesome.
So, here’s how we eat, for those interested in the culinary lives of two farmers and their kids (who eat a variant on our food).
Breakfast: Eggs with cooked greens. Casey makes this meal and he mixes up how he cooks the eggs and what kind of greens. So, one day we might have fried eggs on cooked chard and the next scrambled eggs on cooked kale. We also drink coffee that is half very dark coffee and half heavy cream.
Snacks: Casey and I rarely snack anymore, but the kids do. Snacks around here usually consist of seasonal fruit, often eaten as we pick it. Nuts are a hit too. And yogurt.
Lunch: My goal is to have lunch consist entirely of leftovers, so something reheated from dinner the night before, plus leftover salad (see below for more info on bulk salad). Since this is time when I’m usually with the kids by myself, it’s just too hard to cook an elaborate meal from scratch (which is how we like to eat), so leftovers are awesome. Many of our meals taste better a day later anyway.
Dinner: Like I said above, our meals consist of fat, veggies, and animal protein. I try to have a cooked stew-like thing (usually with cooked greens again) and a raw salad or roasted vegetable. For our rotation, I have eight meals that we switch through for our dinners (making enough for leftovers). I have them listed with basic ingredients, which gives me a starting point, and then the day before, I start thinking about specifics — are we going to eat lamb or pork? What kind of vegetables do we have leftover from the CSA? Etc.
- Tuna/chard/coconut milk/curry + seasonal salad
- Fish or quick cooking meat + seasonal salad + roasted veggies
- Meat/kale/tomatoes/corn/chili powder + seasonal salad
- Meat/kale/butter + roasted veggies
- Seasonal vegetable stew with meat (no greens) + seasonal salad
- Paleo spaghetti (meat/cabbage) + roasted veggies
- Meat/greens/ginger/sesame/soy + seasonal salad
- Liver burgers + seasonal salad or roasted veggies
Usually we garnish these dishes with fresh soft cheese that Casey makes or some other kind of seasonal dressing (like pesto with lots of olive oil). In the winter, we like to garnish with sauerkraut too.
There are a few items here worth describing further, because they are staples in our diet.
Cooked greens: Neither of us grew up eating cooked greens, and it’s something that took time to love. Now these make up the base of our diet. Seriously, if we travel away from home, we can often find meat and other things to eat that we like, but we miss our greens! It’s the first thing we want to eat when we return! Many of our meals start with cooked greens, to which we may add other seasonal vegetables for fun. We feel like we’ve perfected greens (for our tastes and preferences). I’ve described this before, but it’s worth describing again for those who may have missed it:
We start by putting one stick of butter in a pan. If we’re going to make enough for leftovers, we might put two sticks of butter. (Or equivalent of other sources of fat, like lard or coconut oil.) Next, we add chopped greens. For one meal, we might eat two bunches of greens. For a meal plus leftovers, I might cook three or four (or more!) bunches of greens. Depends on the green and how much it cooks down, plus the bunch size. I have a big stainless steel sauté pan I use (5.5 quart) for this. I stir the greens and then add some bone broth. The way we cook our meats often leaves us with good drippings and broth, and this has become an almost miraculous addition to our greens cooking. We used to just sauté them in oil or butter, but now we’re able to really wilt them, plus we get to eat all the good stuff that is in bone broth. Also, the flavor. Oh, the flavor. By cooking with broth at almost every meal, we have finally mastered umami. Between the butter and the broth, our meals are as savory and satisfying as any restaurant meal we’ve ever eaten (which often get their flavor from broths and stocks and fat).
But, back to the greens. I’ll put the lid on to let the greens start to wilt, and then I leave it off for the remainder of cooking. I generally cook on medium-high, stirring frequently and keeping a close eye on everything to make sure the stock doesn’t boil off without me noticing. The goal is to evaporate most of the stock, leaving behind all that flavor and goodness in the greens. The butter helps keep the greens from burning at the end. I vary how dry I let it get depending on my goal — a little more liquid, and I may call it a stew (especially if I’ve added liquid-rich veggies like summer squash and tomatoes). Less liquid and the greens (especially cabbage and onions) will caramelize a bit at the end and be super delicious! Watch it at the end though and take the pan off heat or turn it way down!!!
So, we eat a lot of this stuff. Rapini in the spring, kale and chard in the summer, cabbage in the fall, chopped Brussels sprouts in the winter. We mix it up, and it is awesome.
Next …
Seasonal salads: This is a new addition to our repertoire. We’ve never been huge salad eaters, in part because they take longer to eat and are generally less filling and we’re always rushed (either by work or children). Don’t get the wrong idea, we are extremely blessed that our family eats three sit-down meals made from scratch every day together. These meals are important times for us to connect before scattering in the morning, reconnect mid-day, and then reconnect again at the end of the day. We consider them sacred times. But reality check: they are sacred times that often have a child complaining about the food or another one dumping water on the floor — we try! So, we can’t linger over our meals for an hour like the French apparently do. We gather; we eat; we quickly commune; we get going again. So, salads that take longer to eat and leave us hungry aren’t as useful. I’m an especially slow eater and have a small mouth, making leaves hard for me to eat quickly!
But, lately I have started making what I call “seasonal salads.” They’re really just “chopped” salads — everything that goes in the bowl is first run through our food processor and chopped pretty fine. Then I make a dressing with our immersion blender and stir it all up with my hands. I find these salads to be incredibly satisfying. They are easier for me to eat and can store in the fridge for a few days (and get better as things continue to wilt and flavors blend). I make a habit of making a big batch at once, which we can eat for three or four meals alongside our warm food. Of course, super tender greens like lettuce don’t work here, but many other vegetables and fruits do. Here are some ingredients that can go into a chopped seasonal salad:
- Cabbage
- Russian kale
- Dino kale
- Chicories
- Carrots
- Radishes
- Turnips
- Beets
- Sunchokes
- Zucchini (dry flesh types)
- Tomatoes (chopped)
- Apples
- Pears
- Onions
- Garlic
- Nuts
To add more protein and make it a meal, you could also stir in some leftover chicken or canned salmon or chopped cheese. We’ve done this for meals we eat away from home.
I can vary the flavor through the dressings too by using different oils or vinegars or adding other flavors. For example, I might blend olive oil with red wine vinegar and just add salt and pepper. For another salad I might use walnut oil with apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper and garlic (blended together).
Roasted vegetables: We don’t eat salads every day. It’s nice to mix it up! Plus, we love love love roasted vegetables of all kinds (the kids especially love this preparation method), so we eat these at dinner a few days per week too. We rarely have enough for leftovers though, because we can easily eat an entire pan of veggies at one meal. Roasting vegetables is one of the easier ways to prepare them, but it takes a bit of planning because it takes longer than some methods. We chop our vegetables in even sized pieces (I like them small so there are more edges to get crispy), spread them on a pan with a good lip, put an entire stick of butter (or equivalent coconut oil) on the pan, salt it all liberally and stick it in a 425° oven. After a few minutes, I stir everything so that vegetables are all coated. Sometimes I turn the oven down halfway through cooking (to 375°), but sometimes I don’t. The vegetables are done when they can be easily pierced with a knife and are starting to turn golden (you can’t always tell color though, such as with beets). I pull them out and set the pan on the counter then stir them again, leaving them in an even layer to cool. The exposure to air will help those crispy edges get real crispy, so it’s nice to have a few minutes before pulling them out and serving up (it helps cool things off for kids too). Our favorite vegetables to roast: beets, broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots. Green beans are good too but turn out differently — I don’t like them as soft. I like to toss them lightly with vinegar after cooking — with some chopped tomatoes and basil, it makes a great salad. In the winter, parsnips and butternut are great too.
How we eat meat: I should also point out that when meat is on the menu, it’s not usually on its own. We most often precook our meat by slow cooking (boiling, braising, roasting) — which is how we get all that stock (we also save bones from roasted meat to boil for stock). Then I chop the meat up and stir it into our greens or veggies as they are cooking on the stovetop.
Dessert? In case you’re wondering, our household does partake of what we call “treats” occasionally. But we try to keep it simple and from the farm. So, we may very rarely bake something with almond or coconut flour, but we’re more likely to chop strawberries and top them liberally with whipped cream or make blackberry ice cream with farm cream and eggs. We eat something like this about once a week on average, except during strawberry season, when we ate strawberries with cream almost every day (how could we not?). Casey and I also enjoy bites of very dark chocolate (85%).
Oh, yeah …
Liver burgers? Really? I thought I should explain this one too, since it sounds weird to most people. We have discovered the absolute delight of burgers made with about 2/3 ground meat and 1/3 ground liver (and other organs). Add a bit of ketchup, lots of seasonings, form patties, and fry gently with lots of fat (they stick more than other burgers). Our family devours these. You can make a meatloaf version too, and I think it tastes like what meatloaf was meant to taste like: extra savory and delicious. Plus, we get to enjoy the massive benefits of eating liver, one of the most nutrient dense foods around (Wonder how to get kids to eat vegetables in order to get those vitamins? Just feed them a liver burger once/week, and you’ve got it covered!)
There’s no question our diet is … different. But, have I mentioned that we eat buttloads of vegetables? Seriously, so many. I don’t think we could afford not to be farmers. : ) (We also have big appetites, thanks to me nursing and Casey working hard.)
Perhaps there’s some inspiration in here for your household, whether you want to join us on the Low Carb High Fat bandwagon or not (it seems more people are willing to embrace low carb than high fat, but a diet of just protein will leave you hungry and tired! Fat tastes good too!). We really don’t mean to proselytize about our diet, but we are very enthusiastic about it, because we enjoy it so much. For dinner tonight I made seasonal vegetable stew (tomatoes, summer squash, onions, and beans) with pork belly. Yum.
Next week I’ll get back to more farm-y news. There’s always stuff happening on the farm to talk about, but it’s also fun to explore some of the other dimensions of our farm life. Since we produce food for a living, what we eat seems to often be of interest to others!
Summer feels like it is winding down, is it not? Make yourself a chopped seasonal salad with extra protein in it and take it on a field trip to enjoy these last weeks before school starts or wetter weather returns (which is still a ways out). And, enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
~ ~ ~
Meet this week’s vegetables:
- Yellow plums — These are from a giant, prolific tree next door at my parents’ place. Since the tree has been there forever, we don’t know the variety name and have never been able to accurately identify it. So, Rusty named them “Mimi’s golden yellow plums.” Not just golden, not just yellow — “golden yellow.”
- Tomatoes — They’re here!!!! We grow out tomatoes outside under the sun (instead of in a greenhouse), so we’re usually not quite the first farmers around to have them available. But we grow them abundantly and like to feast on them in their season.
- Basil — A quick easy salad that we do love in our house: tomato slices, topped with chopped basil, and drizzled with good olive oil, crumbled cheese, balsamic vinegar, and salt. Oh my.
- Beans
- Red Russian kale — Maybe this is the week to try our greens cooking method? Kale will take a bit more liquid or more time to cook down than chard (although this Red Russian is quite tender!).
- Beet greens or chard — Chard and beet greens, on the hand, will cook down quite quickly with liquid, so I usually use a bit less so they don’t just turn into mush. Unless I want mush (such as in a stew), which sometimes I do.
- Carrots — A common side dish for our kids to eat a meal: butter carrots (i.e. chopped carrots sautéed slowly in liberal amounts of butter until they are caramelized. It’s really like candy, but oh well.)
- Summer squash & zucchini
- Scallions
