Little Miss Muffet

Soon after I read Michael Pollen's Omnivore's Dilemma, I developed an obsession interest in learning more about "real food".  Look up "how to become a real food foodie" on Google and chances are that you're going to find an overwhelming response that the best first place to start is with Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions.

Talk about a cookbook that bucks every low calorie, low fat notion being pushed on us by the US Food Pyramid...or maybe it's a plate now.  I can't keep up.  Frankly, I don't want to keep up.  Once I get my family's eating on track, then maybe I'll tackle the government.

Ok, so back to Nourishing Traditions.  This book is incredible.  Not only for its recipes (truthfully I've only tackled maybe 1% of them), but for all of the other information it provides.  I have read it pretty much cover to cover at least once, and I've read certain sections maybe a dozen times or more.  I bought the book in Kindle format so when I'm waiting in a long line, too early for preschool pick-up, at a kid's sports practice, etc I will often pull the book up on my phone and just start looking through its pages hunting for inspiration.  Dorky yes.  But also fun...in my own dorky kind of way.

So where to start in this 19,414 page book (that's in the Kindle edition...I think it's only 600ish in print form)?  "Mastering the Basics - Fermented Vegetable & Fruits", why of course.  Why start there you ask?  (1) Because it's the second recipe chapter of the book which makes it pretty close to the beginning, and (2) the first recipe chapter of the book is about cultured dairy products (think piima and buttermilk cultures, homemade yogurt, etc), and it's more than a touch overwhelming.  I'll get there one day, but for now it's all about Little Miss Muffet who:

Sat on her tuffet

Eating her curds and whey.

When along came a spider 

Who sat down beside her

And frightened Miss Muffet away.

You guessed it - the first recipe I tackled in this book (and have made a dozen times or so in the past year) is Whey and Cream Cheese...not quite the same as curds, but you see where I'm going with this.  So basically I take a quart of good quality organic, plain, full fat yogurt and dump it out over a strainer lined with a cheesecloth (or thin kitchen towel in my case).  

When the dripping slows down, pull up the corners of your cloth and concoct something snazzy like I did to get out the final drips.  (Make sure not to squeeze the yogurt.)

Let it sit there for pretty much the whole day and what you have at the end of it all is some of the tartest, most scrumptious cream cheese you have ever tasted and some funky looking yellowish liquid that I am to believe does incredible things to your digestive tract as well as to your vegetables.  (More on the latter later...I've got a few recipes in the works to use up my whey.  Stay tuned.)

So here you go, 

Little Miss Tracy

sitting at her desk typing about 

Along came her daughter

who sat down beside her 

and reminded her it's time to do homework.