Who Hash

This meal is so easy and so tasty. When I was a kid, my mom made this. At some point we started referring to it as Who Hash. Must have been in December when The Grinch Who Stole Christmas played on TV. I had forgotten about this simple dish for a long time, but have been making it recently. There are only three ingredients- all real foods. Plus salt and pepper. Easy.

Who Hash

(amounts of these ingredients can be scaled up or down as appropriate for your needs; this is just how I do it)

1 lb. ground beef
1 cup brown rice (that's one cup dry, which works out to several cooked cups)
1 onion, chopped

1. Cook the rice.
2. While rice is cooking, brown the ground beef and onion together.
3. When rice is done, combine with beef/onion mix and mix well.
4. Season with salt and pepper to taste. This always takes more salt than I expect it to. Add a little, mix well, taste, repeat as necessary.

Enjoy!

Grocery Survey Rant

Last night, I received a phone call asking me to participate in a grocery store survey. Initially I told the guy thanks, but no thanks. And then he said "Well, it would help improve your local store..." and I thought to myself "Hmm...what if it really did improve my local store?!" Ten minutes later I got off the phone totally annoyed. None of the questions on the survey had anything to do with issues that actually would improve shopping there for me. It's almost as if Safeway doesn't really want to know what it would take to do better. No, it's far easier to push the employees to improve their end of it- which is the gist of the line of questioning of the survey.

So this morning I shot off an email to Safeway, telling them of my frustration with the survey and outlining my suggestions for real improvement. Because honestly, the employees at my local store couldn't do a better job! The employees are great! It's the lack of selection of real foods that sucks so bad. It's a huge, huge store with nothing to eat inside it! I hope I emphasized enough how bitter I am about not being able to buy wild-caught salmon except in giant frozen packages that won't fit in my freezer, or tiny frozen packages that won't feed my family. How hard would it really be to offer fresh, wild-caught salmon? Seriously.

I think ShopRite will get my next email. They've started carrying pastured beef (yay!) that comes from Australia (huh?!). Two miles out of town there's cattle in the field, but the stuff they're offering is from Australia? According to travelmath.com, that's 9788 miles away. That's the best they can do? Really?

Have you contacted your grocery store about carrying more real food? Did you hear back? Tell us about it!

This post is participating in Real Food Wednesday, hosted this week by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.

Tiptoeing Into Cultured Vegetables

One of this week's assignments in the 28-Day Real Food Challenge is to get familiar with cultured vegetables. Looking back, the only truly cultured veggie I can recall eating is sauerkraut. I plan to make some, but I know I'll be the only member of my household to eat it. So, I thought for my first effort, I'd try to find something that might...possibly...be eaten by all of us.

After a little web surfing, I found this post about making Marinara-Style Cultured Vegetables. I don't know if this will pass the pickiness test or not, but I decided to give it a whirl. I'll admit right up front that I had no intention of making the quantity this recipe is geared to make. So, I downsized and approximated. And skipped several of the first steps entirely. Here's what I did.

I shredded one beet, old-school.

To that, I added three shredded carrots and one small shredded onion. Why I shredded the onion, instead of just dicing it, I do not know. Shredding onion is neither easy not pleasant. Note to self... I also added the garlic/shallot/basil mix and the dry ingredients. Actually, I didn't have any marjoram so I left that out. And I didn't have fresh oregano, so I added dried.

I mixed the whole mess together, added some whey, and mixed it again.

The mix went into a quart mason jar, with a little extra distilled water since the veggies and whey didn't make quite enough juice. I topped the combination with a clean cabbage leave. It's job is to keep the rest of the stuff below the surface of the brine. If it starts to look like that method is causing trouble, I'll pull it out and try to come up with something else. I've heard of people using baggies full of water, but I'm not sure I want to put plastic into something that is supposed to ferment- so, cabbage leaf it is! Here's the end product.

I'd love to hear what combinations of cultured veggies you have tried, and especially if something was a hit with the kids.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays, hosted this week by Cheeseslave.

One Quarter Dipping Sauce

 ** If you have arrived here after attempting to vote for this recipe, please check back with Nourished Kitchen as it appears there may be a problem with the voting mechanism. Also, thanks so much for your vote!!**

This is my very favorite way to use olive oil. It's easy, healthy, and addictively tasty. This version has a little heat from the garlic and red and black peppers; but it's a simple matter to adjust for your own tastes. The following recipe makes a small quantity because I'm the only one who eats it at my house; but you can scale up or down both the spices and the oil. Letting the spices steep longer in the oil before use will also strengthen the flavor. Here's how I do it.

One Quarter Dipping Sauce

1/4 teaspoon salt (I use Real Salt)
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon rosemary (I used dried today, but you can also steep a twig of fresh for a bit and then remove)
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
chopped fresh basil to taste
chopped fresh garlic to taste

Combine the dry spices in a bowl. Ordinarily, I would use a sprig of fresh rosemary and not add it until the oil was mixed in. But because I used dried rosemary today, I added it with the other dried ingredients.

Next, add in your chopped basil and garlic and toss the ingredients together. This will get the salt working on the garlic and basil. 

Add in the olive oil and stir well to combine. You can use it right away, of course, but the flavors meld together nicely if it sits a little while before using.

If you are participating in the 28-Day Real Food Challenge over at Nourished Kitchen, this dipping sauce goes great with the sourdough bread you can make from your new starter! Enjoy!

This post is my entry in Nourishing Kitchen's Olive Oil Clean Your Plate Challenge and is also my entry for Real Food Wednesdays hosted this week by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.