By Jasmin Schellenberg –
HEALTHY SNACKS AND WHY
Polenta bars with bacon and cheese
Ingredients
4 Tablespoons lard
4 gloves garlic, finely chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 cups broth
2 cups organic corn grits (from Bob’s Red Mill, no GMO)
2 teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
½ cup parmesan or grated cheese
½ cup bacon, sliced and diced
2 eggs
Olive oil for brushing
Method
Fry garlic and onions in a pan with lard until soft. Add broth, bacon, and spices, and heat up to a simmer. In a thin stream, whisk in the grains, constantly stirring. Lower heat and stir frequently for the next 30 minutes. Let cool down for a bit before stirring in the eggs and cheese. Pour on a cookie sheet and flatten with a spatula dipped in hot water to ½ inch thick. Refrigerate one hour, then cut into bars or squares, brush on olive oil, and grill them in a preheated oven (on high heat) for eight minutes or until golden.
Great hot or cold.
This tasty treat is a highly nutrient-dense food.
Enjoy!
NUTRIENT DENSE MEAL
Brisket (serves 8)
Ingredients
3lbs grass-fed brisket
1 Tablespoon bacon fat or fat of your choice
1 onion, sliced thin
½ cup red wine
1 cup marinara sauce
1 cup broth (chicken or beef)
8 carrots, peeled and cut into two-inch pieces
5 small Yukon gold potatoes
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon thyme
½ a green cabbage, chopped into two-inch pieces
salt and pepper to taste
parsley for garnish
Method
Cut the brisket into four pieces and sprinkle with salt. Set the Instant Pot to sauté and add the bacon fat or fat of choice. Working in batches, brown the brisket on both sides, set aside. Add the onion slices and sauté for a few minutes until soft. Deglaze the pot with the wine, scraping up the browned bits. Add the marinara sauce and stir well. Place the brisket over the onion mixture. Add the broth, carrots, potatoes, oregano, and thyme. Sprinkle a little more salt and a few twists of pepper over the dish. Seal the Instant Pot, then set it to manual for 50 minutes. When done, release the pressure.
Add the cabbage and set to manual for another eight minutes. Release the pressure again and remove all the items to a tray. Slice the brisket. Add salt and pepper to taste and garnish with chopped parsley. Can also be cooked in a slow cooker for 10 hours; add vegetables in the last hour.
Enjoy!
MYTHS UNVEILED
Can we truly feed the world?
Imagine we can! What do we need to do to make that happen?
I believe we have to teach our children how to grow food. We need to teach them how vegetables are grown. This is much easier than one thinks, even if you live in an apartment. It would be nice to start in a garden but it’s not a must. There are other options out there such as straw bale growing and growing in containers.
I highly recommend starting with some snap peas. Children love to harvest them all summer long. Also, tomatoes are relatively easy to grow and potatoes for fall harvest. For fruits strawberries are quite fast growers and use little space.
Garden centers sell patio containers with instructions how to grow potatoes. Some are great for tomatoes and others are smaller for peas and strawberries. They also sell the seed. Go for the organic seeds as they won’t be genetically modified. Not using chemical inputs is highly recommended. Chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides along with genetic modification of DNA is untested, unproven, and unnecessary.
Growing vegetables, fruits, and crops naturally is most important as you want to teach your children how to feed the soil by using natural inputs such as compost or compost tea. We do a lot of biodynamic preparations and also use the Korean natural farming practices, which can all be downloaded from the Internet. We also like to use the Maria Thun or Stalla Natura calendar as we grow our garden in sync with the zodiac to the various crops.
How will this feed the world?
Children and you learn about growing food and being responsible for watering and weeding plants. You also feel a great deal of satisfaction once harvest is happening. Also, children will start to understand how much hard work goes into gardening and that it is ok to eat something with a blemish on it, which probably will no longer get discarded. If we no longer discard as much, it surely can feed many more of us.
Did you know that over 50 per cent of food produced is lost or ends up in the garbage? In our industry we have to date everything and even though it’s still perfectly okay to eat on and sometimes past the best before date, people get scared and discard instead of judging for themselves when food is no longer good to eat.
Did you know: Statistics Canada study found last year that the average age of Canadian farmers had reached 55 after rising for decades, and 92 per cent of farms had no written plan for who will take over when the operator retires? It also found there were more farmers over age 70 than under 35 as of July 16, 2017.
That is scary! Who will grow our food in the future? Commercial industrialized agriculture? Mono cultures?
Maybe by planting a seed in our children’s minds, we will grow young farmers of the future who appreciate the value of real food. Farmers are the foundation of the ultimate healthcare system.
Farmers can do more to keep people healthy than all the doctors and hospitals combined. They have the capacity to prevent people from becoming ill.
The true cost of pesticides in our children’s food makes conventional food too expensive. How do you measure the costs of products that can give people a lifetime of poor health compared to those that will help them avoid these problems?
Food is much more than a method of filling our stomachs. The quality of our food has a profound effect on our health, nourishment, and quality of life.
Here’s to our future young farmers!
Check out your local garden centers or Westcoast Seeds www.westcoastseeds.com This website has many great growing tips. For questions write to me: jasmin@pasturetoplate.ca.
A WALK THROUGH YOUR PANTRY:
GET RID OF: Conventional seeds (most of them are GMO or have a chemical fertilizer coating).
REPLACE WITH: Organic seeds.
Brought to you by Jasmin Schellenberg. For “Nourishing our Children” newsletters of the past visit www.thegreengazette.ca.
