Winter Vegetable Quiche

I love making quiche because the combination of ingredients are endless and I can just throw together whatever I'm in the mood for or when I need to use up a bunch of produce. Also, it's perfect for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It's easy to reheat and tastes so good when you take a little extra time to make your own crust. I used to be really intimidated by my mom's homemade crust but all it takes is making it once and you will always prefer it over something frozen. And as far as quiches go, there are a million recipes out there which vary in the amount of eggs, milk and cheese used. This one uses a modest amount of dairy and lots of tasty vegetables. 

This homemade pie crust looks golden and dreamy in natural light, waiting to be filled with beautiful winter vegetables.

QUICHE
4 eggs
1 cup of milk
1 cup of shredded mozzarella (swiss, provolone, cheddar and gruyere all work fine too)
2 tablespoons of flour
1|2 pound mushrooms
about 2 cups of greens - I used baby kale and spinach
1|2 cup sweet peppers such as red or yellow bell, chopped
1|2 cup diced red onion
3 cloves minced garlic
sliced tomatoes
1|4 cup good sausage or bacon are good in here too - I used soysage to keep it vegetarian
a big pinch of dried mustard
salt + pepper
crushed red pepper flakes for heat
smoked paprika
nutritional yeast (optional)
freshly grated parmesan for the top
olive oil or fresh butter for the saute

DIRECTIONS
Preheat your oven to 375. In a medium sized bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, flour and nutritional yeast together and set aside while you make the saute. Heat a skillet and melt in your oil or butter. Add the onion and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the peppers, mushrooms, garlic, dried mustard and crushed red pepper and cook for another 5 minutes. Add your greens and a splash of water. Cover and turn off the heat for another 5 minutes. The greens will wilt and turn bright green. Stir in your cooked sausage, bacon or soysage if using and season with salt + pepper. Spread the shredded cheese in the bottom of your pie crust. See the highly recommended recipe and directions for my homemade crust below. Spread the vegetable mixture over the cheese. Pour the egg mixture in last. Arrange the sliced tomatoes over the top in a circular pattern. Sprinkle them with black pepper, smoked paprika and parmesan cheese. Bake for 35 - 45 minutes until the pie is firm in the middle and has risen. Allow it to cool for at least 15 -20 before cutting into it. I always serve cooked dishes with something raw. In this case, I made a small avocado salad on top of a handful of the reserved, uncooked greens and drizzled the whole thing with Sriracha! It is so good any time of the day. Hearty, satisfying comfort food that is full of essential nutrients, minerals, fiber and healthy fats and proteins. Of course, there is room for many optional embellishments here. Go crazy with it and make something unique!

HOMEMADE PIE CRUST

6 tablespoons of COLD butter

1 1|2 cups unbleached, organic white or whole grain pastry flour

4 tablespoons cold water, milk or buttermilk

pinch of salt

DIRECTIONS

Whisk the flour and salt together. Using a pastry blender, cut the butter into the flour until it resembles crumbly sand. Mix in the water with a spoon until just combined. Don't overdo this step. If you don't have a pastry blender, you can use a food processor. See photos in my previous post about how to use a pastry blender and what it looks like here. Flour a clean surface that you can roll it out the dough on. Using a rolling pin, start rolling the dough outward in a uniform circle until it's an inch bigger than your pie plate. Gently lift it up and center it in your dish. Press it into the corners gently and crimp the rim with your fingers or shape it around the fluted edge of one. Use scissors to trim the edge neatly. I always roll the extra dough out and put it on a sheet pan for a few minutes to make little pastry chips. You can crumble them up on top of your salad or eat them on the side. Who doesn't love a little extra crust?

ENJOY!!

Winter Gardening 101

Welcome to The Fortress. This is truly my sanctuary. Our garden never sleeps. And anyone who maintains that you can't garden all year long in a place like Oklahoma, is poorly mistaken. Our seasons are marked by extreme temperatures and incredible fluctuations. When choosing crops and plant material here, it is always wise to consult a local gardener or farmer for advice. The tags that come with plants in greenhouses reflect a generalized spectrum of hardiness, zones and tolerance. Something that says full sun doesn't always mean full sun in an Oklahoma summer. The best gardeners are the ones who learn by trial and error the varieties that grow well and can really stand up to extreme cold and heat. This comes from failure. In any undertaking, you must be willing to fail in order to be good. The same principle applies in the kitchen when trying new recipes and learning your way around the knife. All of this said, I've put together this post with lots of delicious photos of my winter garden and methods for you.

This bed was all started from seed in September. It contains from front to back, green leaf lettuce, speckled green leaf lettuce, mesclun mix lettuces, radishes, spinach, mache, endive, carrots, kale, mustard greens, fennel and leeks.

This is a standard blue kale that you can keep miniaturized as baby kale if you pinch the leaves back every week. The young leaves are also more tender and mild. They work perfectly in salads but you can also wilt it or saute it. The mature leaves can be a little bitter to eat raw but they make great kale chips and can stand up to a soup or a quiche.

I love the radishes as they fatten up and turn red. The tops peek out of the soil to let you know they are ready to pull. These were pretty spicy even for radishes. The tap root is the spiciest part of the entire plant. The sprouts are delicious when they are about an inch or two tall. As the tops mature, they develop little prickly spines on the under side and aren't as enjoyable.

This is giant oxford purple mustard greens. The flavor is intense and has quite a bite to it. These are traditionally sauteed and wilted down with garlic or you can chop them up and add to a hearty soup with beans or sausage.

The tender and delicate flavor of mache makes any salad less ordinary. I'm not sure what I love more than a giant salad with tons of mixed greens. This is my favorite way to get my greens in. I don't juice very often because it doesn't always agree with me. I prefer all of the fiber and I really love the crunch. I have a big raw salad with every meal so a variety of greens are essential in my winter garden.

These bushy radish tops are so pretty. You can look down between the rows and see little pops of red when they are ready to be picked.

This was about the equivalent of two packs of seeds. Lettuces have good germination rates and you can find good organic seed at health food stores. You can also order online if you can't find any locally. I recommend Botanical Interests and Seeds of Change.

How beautiful are these carrots? They're lacy and feminine and the most fun to pick. Louise Riotte called carrots the glamour girls of the root group. She was an incredible organic gardener from Ardmore, Oklahoma. Her books Carrots Love Tomatoes and Astrological Gardening are my two sources for everything. She is my source for companion planting and following the cycles of the moon as they correspond to each ritual of the garden. Sewing, planting, watering, feeding, picking and pulling. We definitely speak the same language.

These radishes are so beautiful! I picked these on December first. I'll be able to do this every couple of weeks all the way through February. It keeps the rows thinned out and productive and gives me fresh, crunchy vegetables for salad, coleslaw, sandwiches and hummus!

I served these at my Kombucha Home Brewing Workshop the day I picked them. I paired this bundle with a garlicky hummus for a real treat for my clients. Everyone loved them. What a simple and satisfying thing it was to serve them to others. Small accomplishments with big rewards.

I eat this every day. A huge pile of beautiful mixed greens, at a minimum of twice a day. Sweet, spicy, crunchy, green, alive. Totally organic and grown from my organic compost. Want to know more about starting a compost pile? Check out my post here. It's a really conscious practice that not only gives you incredible garden amendments, but it reduces methane in the environment. The first step to reducing your kitchen carbon print is by separating your trash. When you remove the organic, compostable waste and the recyclables, there is little left to throw away. Our family only creates a bag of kitchen trash every two weeks! Composting is a win-win-win. There is no other way around that.

Kale is my favorite green of the garden. Brassica oleracea, the most nutritious and versatile of this family of plants. I can't think of another green that has more super status than this one. Eaten raw, it contains loads of calcium, beta carotene, vitamin C, cancer - preventative compounds, and sulfur which has antibiotic and antiviral properties. Check out my post from last spring here to read about the health benefits of a variety of greens I grew and some beautiful photos.

Leafy radishes almost ready to pick and baby spinach that is a couple of weeks behind. The spinach is tougher than the radishes when it comes to cold tolerance. They almost enjoy a gentle thaw when there is a light winter frost. But during hard freezes, snow and ice, we cover these beds to keep them perfectly green and damage free. It extends the life of them all the way until March. They will bolt when the weather changes and remains warm for a period of time.

Okay, so here's my secret to our homemade cold frame. We take our tomato cages and lay them on their sides, big ends together. This creates a hoop effect so that when we stretch the greenhouse plastic over the beds, it doesn't touch the plants. When ice or snow accumulates, it can actually still cause freeze damage if the plastic is laying on the leaves. This elevates it and creates a little heat pocket. We put these between the rows and on the walk ways. We secure the sides with bricks or heavy pots or wood. It has to be sealed up all the way around in order to really work good. Everything we use is repurposed or simply a found object from the yard. It's easy to roll back on warmer days and allows the exchange of fresh air so that mold and mildew don't start to form. 

This is exactly what happened to us a few weeks ago. The beds were covered up for almost two weeks with frigid temperatures that plummeted to 6 degrees one night! A thick layer of snow like this almost behaves like an insulator. It was much colder outside of the greenhouse, probably 10 - 15 degree difference. After everything thawed and the temps were above 40, I uncovered it, not sure how everything managed since I couldn't see in. 

This is what I found as I peeled the greenhouse back. A warm, glowing earthy garden alive and well. The lettuces are the most tender of all the winter plants, and as you can see, they survived immaculately! Proof that this method works. It's simple, inexpensive and ecologically sound. I encourage you to try your hand at winter gardening. Start with a small version of this and experiment with different varieties of cool loving plants. Eating fresh, green home grown vegetables through the winter is wonderful as a mood lifter and gives you a fun outdoor project to work on. Most of all, it's pretty awesome going to a dinner or holiday party with an armload of beautiful things that you grew. Talk about wowing your friends and family! Everything tastes better when shared.

December Full Moon

What are your FULL MOON MEDITATIONS for today? This particular aspect is effaced with polarity as the sun and moon were in opposition at 3:28 this morning, occupying a solar Sagittarius and a lunar Gemini. It has since moved into Cancer and carries the harmony of being at home in this position. The moon rules Cancer. This is the alignment that magnifies the moon's greatest influence. Everything will be felt with more intensity for the next two days. This is a good time to work on your home-space. Rearrange it, wash it, organize it. Cozy up on the inside with stimulating material about mind expansion, spirituality and knowledge. Meditative practices will be especially powerful and your mind|body connection is ready to receive. Deepen your dialogue with water. Hydrate, irrigate, bathe, make a soup. Use any conflict you might feel to delineate the mystery behind the subconscious. Focus on action instead of reaction. Transform tender heart strings into music and radiate love, warmth and affection. Weed your garden and find the zen of the act. Cultivate your creativity because you will have an explosive instinct to share it with the world by Friday morning.

Crispy Flatbread Pizzas

I've been trying to find a good recipe for a quick pizza dough without the rise time when working with yeast. I can be patient, but my kids, not so much. So I came up with a two-in-one solution using my home made tortillas. By rubbing a little olive oil over them, it makes the edges crisp up just like a pizza. I like thin cracker-like crust anyway, so this worked PERFECTLY. With the tortillas already made, this recipe takes 30 minutes or less! I usually spend weekends restocking my pantry with our home made staples like the tortillas, granola, crackers, almond milk etc... so I typically have them on hand most of the time. Everyone got to have exactly what they wanted on their pizza which was a big win. Serve it with a salad and you're done!

 I used my cashew cream as a vegan alfredo and it was delicious. I like to make vegetables the star of my pie so I just loaded on sliced mushrooms, diced zucchini, quartered grape tomatoes and a giant pile of arugula. I drizzled the whole thing with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Then I crumbled up some chunks of fresh mozzarella. It's really flavorful and you don't have to load up on the heavy shredded stuff. It makes this pizza light and tasty while still getting that bubbly brown on top.

Bake this at 450 for 10 - 12 minutes, rotating it halfway through the cooking time. You can get super creative with toppings and flavor combinations. Experiment and have fun with it. Let your kids make their own by setting out bowls of toppings. They will love that.

Get the recipe for the whole grain tortillas here and the cashew alfredo here.

ENJOY!

Whole Grain Tortillas

Sometimes I just feel like an old fashioned recipe. You can still have healthy foods without going vegan or gluten free. I think it's important to realize the language of our health depends on the signals we receive from our body. It will always let us know when something isn't right. Listen to the way you feel after you eat. Are you tired or cranky afterwards? Do you get headaches or feel abdominal discomfort? These are the important questions. Though gluten is considered inflammatory even in small amounts, some of us are less sensitive and will tolerate it without much interruption. Moral of the story is: Experiment with foods and combinations. Deepen the dialogue between your mind | body connection and make notes. You are on your way to writing your own food signature.

INGREDIENTS
1 cup unbleached organic white flour
1 cup organic whole wheat flour
3 tablespoons good olive oil
2 tablespoons filtered water
1|2 teaspoon sea salt

DIRECTIONS
Mix the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the middle. Pour in the water and olive oil. Mix with a spoon until everything is just combined. Do not over mix this step. Keep a dish of flour on your workspace where you'll be rolling the dough. You'll need a rolling pin and a dough scraper or a metal spatula.

Lightly flour a clean surface. Knead the dough about 15 times until it becomes uniform and stretchy. Keep dusting your hands and the counter with just enough flour to keep it from sticking to everything. Kneading dough is simple if you have never done it before. Make a ball and with the base of your palm, press into it and spread it in all directions. Pull one side over to meet the other and press it into a ball again. You are literally stretching and activating the gluten. It takes a little elbow grease but it isn't hard once you get going. You'll know it's ready when you push on it and it bounces back. Let it rest for 10 minutes.

Take a dough scraper or a knife and cut it into 8 sections. These are your tortillas. Roll each one into a ball and start rolling it out gently in all directions, creating a fairly uniform circle about 1|8 inch thin. Cook them in a lightly oiled pan for 2-3 minutes on both sides. They should start to brown a little. After they have cooled, you can store them in a plastic bag in your refrigerator. I reuse old bread bags. They work perfectly. I have made a million different things with these. Check out the flat bread pizza I did recently here. It was delicious!

ENJOY!

Kombucha Home Brewing Workshop 2 + 3

In September, I taught my second home brewing workshop in Norman at Scissortail School of Art. My good friend Lindsey is the owner there and she allows me access to her studio for shows and classes. She also rents the studio for art - themed birthday parties and private events. It's perfect for kids. Check out her site for a little tour and to contact her for bookings.

We had an intimate gathering of ladies that afternoon for a quaint discussion on the art of home brew and women's health. I was encouraged by the fact that I did not know any of them. We created new friendships and continued the ongoing conversation about creating our tribal intersection through modern culture. We sipped on flavors of my personal elixir and snacked on tasty, healthy treats. It was pretty perfect.

I'm happy to announce that I've been invited to teach another workshop in December at the new Native Roots Market location in downtown OKC. This will be the first workshop for the city. You can get the details and see the event flyer below.

I always bring four different and unique flavors of my personal home brew to sample. You can get a taste of the variations at your direction when you do it yourself. Controlling the flavors, herbs, acidity, carbonation and nutritional profile are all part of perfecting your elixir. Taking ownership of the ways in which we heal ourselves puts us in the driver's seat of optimum wellness. We are creating our personal lifestyle brands and signatures, writing and editing success stories as we go.

We also passed around SPIDER CIDER and discussed the symbiotic benefits to having that and kombucha flowing through our bodies every day. They both regulate PH and keep our digestive and immune systems firing in top form.

Though kombucha is made from green or black tea, I have been experimenting with Hibiscus flowers. They're really beautiful in their dried form and contain a natural bright pink dye that turns the tea and the culture pink.

This is raw kombucha culture. The round one was made with Hibiscus. It is not actually a mushroom though it is commonly referred to as one. Because it ferments, it falls under the science of Mycology, which is the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans. Consider the the implications of penicillin and it's antibiotic properties. The same activity is present in the tea made from kombucha.

The next workshop is scheduled for Sunday, December 1 at Native Roots Market, located at 131 NE 2nd Street in downtown Oklahoma City. I'm bringing some tasty appetizers from my garden to table menu and seasonal flavors of home brew to sip on. Attendants get to take home starter culture and literature with complete brewing, bottling, flavoring and safety guidelines. Starter kits will be available for purchase separately. They include everything you need to start brewing immediately.

Space may be limited. If you would like to pre-register and save your spot, you may do so through Pay Pal by posting your payment to redmagnetic@gmail.com. Cost is $40. You can RSVP, ask questions, get directions and additional details on the Facebook event page here.

Join us and bring a friend!

Photos by Keisha Register and Greer Inez.

Herbed Seed and Nut Crackers

The philosophy behind Urban Homesteading is to find a balance between what we consume and what can make ourselves. We all know that our food is fresher in taste and quality when prepared in our home kitchens. The ritual itself eliminates the need for preservatives and reduces consumer packaging, meaning less waste, more sustainability. Though it's more time consuming than hopping over to the store, I think you'll find that carving out a little time to make something yourself will leave you with a feeling of pride and accomplishment. What have we sacrificed in order to maintain our health? A little television time? Compulsively checking email? I have no doubt that everyone leads a busy life in one way or another so what I'm getting at is, find a time when you can devote an hour or so to creating something delicious and healthy for yourself and your families. It will inspire you to share your success with others which in turn creates a higher consciousness in communities as we inspire, lift up and co-author our lives together. 

 These crackers are really high in plant based protein, omegas and fiber. The addition of fresh herbs greatly enhances their artisan like quality and makes them really good with a cheese plate, fresh tomatoes, other nut cheeses and spreads.

This is yet another recipe where I get to use my almond meal in place of flour for a gluten free pastry like cracker that is light and fragrant. The sesame seeds make it really nutty and the cashews have a creamy note. I use flax and chia meal in just about everything possible, which is really easy to make yourself. You can buy the whole seeds and put them into a coffee bean grinder or small food processor. If you don't have either of those, they are also available in powder form.

Picking fresh herbs for a meal is so satisfying. It's really worth the investment to start a kitchen garden. These herbaceous perennials are my constant companions. Rosemary, Thyme, Oregano and Lavender are evergreen so I get to use them all year long. Other tender herbs like Basil, Cilantro and Parsley only grow as an annual in Oklahoma. These can still be enjoyed in small pots indoors during cold weather, and pinched until spring when they can be transplanted outside again.

You can also preserve the delicate flavor of herbs by chopping them and making herbal vinegars or infused oils which makes a great marinade for vegetables, chicken and fish. Another easy way to keep them over the winter is to fill ice cube trays half full and top with olive oil. Wrap with a few layers of plastic wrap and they can be thawed quickly in a saute pan or soup.

I love this miniature chef's knife. Perfect for herbs and tiny things. Rosemary goes through a secondary flowering in the fall and puts on little purple blooms that make a pretty garnish for your dish when you are plating up.

This dough is made in the food processor, then wrapped in plastic and chilled in the refrigerator for an hour or overnight. It's so beautiful and simple with flecks of green herbs and sesame seeds running through it.

After you take your dough out of the refrigerator, put it between two pieces of parchment paper and roll it out with a rolling pin to about 1|8 inch thin. Thicker than that, the crackers won't be as crispy and thinner than that, they will fall apart and can't retain their cracker shape. I like the irregular edges.

Using a pizza wheel or sharp knife, cut the dough into what ever shape you like. You can do triangles or rectangular bistro style cuts. There is no real science to this part. Do letters or hearts with a cookie cutter - have fun!

The aroma of these cooking is quite heavenly. I love cooking smells in the home. It's always been a source of comfort for me. I come from a long line of green thumbs and homesteaders. These sensory images are something I have always known.

INGREDIENTS
1|2 cup almond meal
1|2 cup raw cashews
2 tablespoons flax|chia meal
1|3 cup sesame seeds
2 tablespoons freshly chopped herbs such as thyme, rosemary, oregano or a combination of them
1|2 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon coconut oil
2 tablespoons filtered water

DIRECTIONS
Combine the almond meal, cashews and flax meal in a food processor and pulse until it is evenly ground. Add the sesame seeds, herbs, half of the sea salt, maple syrup and the coconut oil until combined. Add the water a little at a time until everything starts to stick together. Form the dough into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill for a minimum of one hour or up to overnight.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees and line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and put it between two pieces of parchment paper. Roll it out to 1|8 inch thick. Cut the crackers into a desired shape. Using a sharp edged spatula or pastry knife, gently lift the crackers up and place them 1|4 inch apart on the prepared baking sheet. Bake the crackers 12-14 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the cook time. The edges should be toasted, light brown and crispy. Sprinkle the remaining sea salt on top upon removing. Let cool completely.

Serve these with the Lemon Rosemary Cashew Cheese or your favorite hummus. I think they would be good with any kind of creamy addition and of course fresh tomatoes. Add them to a fruit and cheese plate for the holidays or serve with a hearty soup. The possibilities are endless!

ENJOY!!