Modern Wife

Tag: eggs

  • Giant Puffball Mushroom

    Giant Puffball Mushroom

    Overnight it seemed, these giant puffball mushrooms sprouted in our backyard. We spotted them in autumn last year and let them grow till they popped into greenish brown powdery spores. Cute, then gross. This year, we found a bunch of them in the same spot. I wondered if they were edible. Google said yes. And it has been found to contain a mucoprotein called calvacin, which is a potent antitumor agent, but becomes toxic with prolonged use. Once a year, though, and eating it as close to nature as possible instead of ingesting a distilled version? I’m willing to give it a try.

    So we plucked one out, inspected it to make sure it really was a Calvatia gigantea, and rinsed the dirt off.

    Wash the dirt off the giant puffball mushroom

    Cut off the bottom. This picture shows a couple of the defining characteristics of a Calvatia gigantea: no stem and no gills.

    giant puffball mushrooms have no stem and no gills underneath

    Slice it up. Some people slice off the outer layer and wind up with a block. We just sliced it. As you can see, we picked it early enough in its development stages. The inside is still white and perfect. Do not eat if there are spores.

    slice the giant puffball mushroom

    Store and refrigerate the rest.

    store and refrigerate the giant puffball mushroom

    Some organic extra virgin coconut oil on the cast iron griddle over medium low. Throw in a sliced onion and cook until glassy. I mixed equal parts safflower oil and soy sauce, some salt and pepper to taste, garlic powder, pinch of cayenne, dipped the giant puffball mushroom slice both sides and cooked it.

    cooking the giant puffball mushroom

    Cut it up into strips and serve it up. It would make an amazing addition to stir fry vegetables. The mushroom flavor is subtle and takes on seasonings really well. The texture is soft and smooth against the tongue. I love it!

    stir fry giant puffball mushroom strips

    Also great dipped in a beaten egg and French Toasted.

    dip giant puffball mushroom in egg and cook it

    Gluten-free French Toast Giant Puffball Mushroom with maple syrup drizzled on top and fruit on the side.

    Gluten-free French Toast Giant Puffball Mushroom with maple syrup drizzled on top and fruit on the side

    Have you ever eaten a Giant Puffball Mushroom? Got any recipes to share? Scroll below to comment. Thank you!

  • Cranberry Cheesecake

    Cranberry Cheesecake

    From the moment I took my first ever bite of a cheesecake, I was hooked for life. For the longest time, though, I always bought it, never made it from scratch here at home. It took a friend coming over and making one right in my kitchen before I realized how easy it is. Back then I didn’t even have a KitchenAid Mixer . It was all made with elbow grease. (The trick is to make sure the cream cheese is completely soft.)

    Now that my dear husband bought me one, it’s even easier. Faster. Well, at least the prep is. So tempt your family with this cheesecake recipe if you want them to get you a KitchenAid Mixer for Christmas. It will be worth it, I promise.

    Cranberry Cheesecake

    Ingredients for Cheesecake:
    (Get certified organic ingredients when possible.)
    15 graham crackers, ground
    3 tablespoons butter, melted
    4 packages cream cheese (8 oz each)
    1 1/2 cups sugar
    3/4 cup almond milk
    4 eggs
    1 cup sour cream
    1 tablespoon vanilla
    1/4 cup all-purpose flour

    Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 degrees Celsius). Grease a 9 inch springform pan. Thrifty Tip: I save the wax paper from sticks of butter in the freezer. I use it to grease any and all baking pans.

    In a medium bowl, mix graham cracker crumbs with melted butter and press onto the bottom of the springform pan.

    In the KitchenAid Mixer bowl (or a large bowl), mix cream cheese with sugar until smooth. Add almond milk, eggs one at a time, sour cream, vanilla, and flour. Mix until smooth. Pour this cream cheese mix into springform pan, on top of the graham cracker crust.

    Bake for 1 hour. Turn the oven down to 300 degrees Fahrenheit for the next 30 minutes, then to 250 for another 30 minutes. Turn the oven off but let the cheesecake stand in the oven. Do not take the cheesecake out. Keep the oven door closed while it cools, approximately 5 hours. Once the oven and the cheesecake is cooled completely, take the cheesecake out of the oven and chill in the refrigerator.

    For cranberry topping, use my Maple Cranberry Sauce recipe.

    Cheers to you on this holiday season!

  • Quail Eggs

    Quail Eggs

    Aren’t quail eggs cute? Five of these quail eggs would have the caloric equivalent of one large chicken egg. They’re rich in vitamin A, choline, selenium, and iron. (Source)

    You may encounter raw quail eggs on top of tobiko in fine sushi restaurants. It makes my mouth water just typing those words up.

    I bought mine at my local farmers market. At home, I hardboil them for 3 minutes, peel, and serve with soup. Here’s a quick recipe that is done in minutes. You’ll spend more time peeling those quail eggs than cooking this meal. Ya!

    Noodles with Quail Eggs

    Miso Noodles with Quail Eggs

    Ingredients:
    1 tablespoon dulse
    2 tablespoons miso
    3 cups water
    6 oz. soba noodles
    1 nardello sweet pepper, chopped
    hardboiled quail eggs
    green onion

    Bring water to boil on high heat. Add dulse and miso. Once boiling, add noodles. Cook for 4 minutes. Toss in sweet pepper and quail eggs at the last minute. Serve with green onion garnish. Serves 3.

    Lunchtime!

  • Date Balls

    Date Balls

    Last Christmas, while gathered around the dinner table at Aunt Faye’s, we got talking about Mammy Flanders’ Date Balls. My husband said it was one of his favorite snacks Mammy made. Aunt Faye didn’t like it much, so it was always missing from her dessert spread during the holidays. My husband wanted to have a taste of them again.

    Aunt Faye brought out (gasp) Mammy Flanders’ recipe box, filled with handwritten recipes from several generations back.

    “Here,” she said. “You can take that home and go through it. It’s gotta be in there somewhere.”

    The cousins all looked longingly at Mammy Flanders’ recipe box. I myself was astounded at how easily it was to pry that heirloom recipe box from Aunt Faye’s hands, but she must have known it was in good hands. My husband felt a responsibility to give back to the family, so he transcribed Mammy’s recipes and posted it as an ebook for everyone to enjoy.

    Since then we’ve been going through the recipes one by one and trying them out. Give this one a try.

    Date Balls

    Ingredients:
    1/4 cup butter
    1 cup sugar
    2 eggs
    1 teaspoon vanilla
    ¼ teaspoon salt
    1 ½ cup ground dates
    3 cups rice crispies

    Cook all ingredients except rice crispies in frying pan over high heat for 10 minutes, stirring constantly to keep from burning. Remove from heat, then add the rice crispies and mix well. Once cool enough to touch, form into tight balls and roll in shredded coconut.

    Enjoy!

  • Coconut Quinoa Cereal

    Coconut Quinoa Cereal

    You might be surprised by how delicious and filling this Coconut Quinoa Cereal is, while being quite possibly the healthiest breakfast on the planet. Let’s look at the ingredients.

    Quinoa is a versatile whole grain that can be made into a salad, a lunch casserole, or a dinner side.

    Quinoa is gluten-free, high in protein, and one of the few plant foods that contain all nine essential amino acids. It is also high in fiber, magnesium, B-vitamins, iron, potassium, calcium, phosphorus, vitamin E and various beneficial antioxidants.

    – 11 Proven Health Benefits of Quinoa
    Authority Nutrition

    Coconut milk is no slouch either. Coconut milk improves heart health, builds muscle, helps lose fat, prevents fatigue, stimulates digestion, relieves constipation, manages blood sugar, and prevents anemia, joint inflammation, and ulcers. (Source: Dr. Axe)

    Don’t you feel healthier already? Now go and make this cereal.

    Coconut Quinoa Cereal

    Ingredients:
    1 cup coconut milk
    1/2 cup quinoa
    1/3 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
    Maple syrup or raw honey to taste
    More coconut milk to taste

    Heat the coconut milk until boiling. Add quinoa and cover. Lower heat to simmer until the coconut milk is absorbed but still slightly wet. Mix the shredded coconut in. Serve warm with maple syrup or raw honey and more coconut milk to taste. Makes 2 servings.

    Experiment with some of your favorite toppings. Sliced apples with cinnamon, berries, bananas, nuts. Have a happy healthy start to your day!

  • Pigs in a blanket

    Pigs in a blanket

    This little piggy went to the party. This little piggy went to school. This little piggy was an afternoon snack at home. This little piggy went to gymnastics practice. And this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way in my tummy.

    It’s the middle of winter and these piggies are cold! Make them blankets from scratch! Sure, you can buy prepackaged dough that pops out of a cardboard can, but then you’d be setting yourself up for all kinds of chemical additives and subpar ingredients. Besides, making the dough from scratch is easy and fun. My 11 year-old daughter can do it by herself. Kneading it is the best part. She gets all kung fu about it. You can, too.

    Pigs in a blanket recipe

    Ingredients:
    2 cups organic all-purpose flour
    1/2 teaspoon baking powder
    1 tablespoon sugar
    1 teaspoon salt
    1/2 cup organic safflower oil
    1/2 cup hot water
    30 mini beef franks
    1 egg, beaten
    sesame seeds
    flax seeds

    Preheat oven 375 degrees F. Mix together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in a medium bowl. Add oil and water. Whisk together until fully incorporated and you see no powdered lumps left. Knead the dough well on a floured surface. Divide the dough in half and roll out the first lump until it’s thin and semi-rectangular. Using a knife or a pizza roller, cut out 15 triangles. Position a mini frank on the wider end of each triangle and roll the dough around the little piggy. Brush with egg and lay on a greased baking sheet. Repeat until there are 30 little piggies in a row. Sprinkle sesame seeds and flax seeds. Bake for 25 minutes or until pastry is golden brown.

  • Duck Eggs

    Duck Eggs

    I received a flat of fresh duck eggs as a gift!

    I grew up eating duck eggs in the Philippines. The infamous balut is hardboiled fertilized duck egg, with a half-formed baby chick on one side and a bright yellow veiny yolk on the other. Begin by cracking the balut on one end to make a little hole, sprinkle some salt in there and suck on the soup. Then remove the rest of the shell, salt to taste and dig in. I’ve never eaten the chick part, but the yolk is rich and protein-packed goodness in a gulp. There is also a hard white “bone” in there. Don’t eat that.

    Penoy is another duck egg delicacy. It is unfertilized duck eggs, not as gruesome as its counterpart. It is all yellow yolk the whole egg through. It comes either soupy or dry. The soupy kind was incubated in rice hay for 12 days. Incubated for more than 12 days and it dries out for those who prefer to eat the dry kind.

    I received a flat of #duck #eggs as a gift. That’s 30 eggs!

    A photo posted by Modern Wife (@modernwife) on

    The duck eggs I received were unfertilized and not incubated. They were simple farm fresh duck eggs, and the first thing I did was hard boil some of them. Same as chicken eggs, I fill a small pot with water to cover the eggs, set the stove on high until the water reaches a rolling boil, then turn the burner off. I let the eggs sit in hot water for 15 minutes, then pour the water out and rinse the eggs in cold water.

    Hard boiled #duck #egg. A photo posted by Modern Wife (@modernwife) on

    I love eggs of all kinds. They are perfection!

    Peeling a hard boiled #duck #egg. A photo posted by Modern Wife (@modernwife) on

    Look at how much of the egg is yolk, and how rich and creamy it is. Duck eggs are bigger and more nutritious than chicken eggs. It has 52% more vitamin B12, 13% more selenium, 10% more iron, almost twice as much omega-3s than chicken eggs. The list goes on. Whatever nutrition chicken eggs have, duck eggs have more of it. And because there isn’t a huge duck egg industry, it is more likely that duck eggs come from humanely raised ducks that get to run around free at the farm.

    That #yolk is a beauty. Flavorful too! Hard boiled #duck #egg.

    A photo posted by Modern Wife (@modernwife) on

    Duck eggs can be cooked every way chicken eggs are cooked. We used it for homemade pasta, green egg sandwich, and ice cream.

    4 #duck #egg #yolks. Can you guess what I’m making?

    A photo posted by Modern Wife (@modernwife) on

    So if you ever come across duck eggs at farmers markets or health food stores, jump on it. This richer and more nutritious egg is worth a try.

    Duck Eggs

  • How to Make Homemade Pasta

    How to Make Homemade Pasta

    My daughter has been making homemade pasta with her Dad for as long as she remembers. Preparing meals is a family activity in our home. It’s so gratifying to see my 10-year-old daughter competently handling knives and the stove, while conversing about our family’s health philosophy (in between silly stuff).

    We stopped eating wheat for a few years, but the complexity of blended flours trying to capture the texture and taste of wheat seemed more of a process than simply committing to using organic or non-GMO wheat flour products.

    We still enjoy coconut flour for making coconut muffins, arrowroot flour for making dry arrowroot cookies, rice flour for making rice cakes. But when it comes to making bread and pasta, there is nothing like good old wheat.

    Homemade Pasta

    Ingredients:
    1 cup semolina flour
    1/2 teaspoon salt, optional
    2 eggs or 3 egg whites, free-range and organic

    Combine semolina flour and salt. Add beaten eggs. Mix to make a stiff dough. On a lightly floured surface, flatten dough with a rolling pin. Jelly-roll the flattened dough and cut into noodles.

    Homemade pasta for dinner. #semolina #pasta

    A photo posted by Modern Wife (@modernwife) on

    We used a curly knife to cut the pasta.

    My daughter chops the #pasta with a curly knife.

    A photo posted by Modern Wife (@modernwife) on

    Bring a large pot of water to boil. Unroll the pasta and add to the pot of boiling water. Cook until al dente.

    Unrolling #homemade #pasta.

    A photo posted by Modern Wife (@modernwife) on

    Serve with your favorite sauce. Or simply toss with butter, salt and herbs such as green onions and cilantro.

    #homemade #pasta #dinner with chopped #herbs. #cilantro #greenonions

    A photo posted by Modern Wife (@modernwife) on

    Serves 3.

    Buon appetito!

    Homemade Pasta

  • Organic Easter Eggs

    Organic Easter Eggs

    For weeks now I’ve been walking past grocery aisles seeing brightly colored plastic Easter eggs that pop open to contain candy. We’ve been saving our set year after year, and called it the eco-friendly way because they’re reusable. But a basketful of candy is hardly the celebration of spring I would like to encourage as a healthy family tradition.

    At one point we also brought home an Easter Egg dye kit from the local convenience store. It came with little tablets of dye and a bunch of stickers for decorating hardboiled eggs. Although the package states it’s non-toxic, the list of ingredients contains synthetic chemical dyes that have been found to cause allergies and behavioral problems in children.

    So this weekend we are starting a new old tradition of making Easter eggs out of vegetables that are naturally staining.

    Like beets!

    Easter Eggs dyed with beets

    And red cabbage!

    Easter Eggs dyed with red cabbage

    And turmeric!

    Easter Eggs dyed with turmeric

    The recipe is easy.

    You need:
    1 tablespoon of distilled white vineger for each cup of water
    white organic eggs

    So if you need 3 cups of water in a saucepan to cover your eggs, then you will need to add 3 tablespoons of vinegar.

    Then chop up and add your staining vegetable of choice. Put them in the vinegar/water combination with the eggs. Bring to a boil, turn off the stove, then cover and let sit for 15 minutes. Transfer the whole soup into a quart mason jar or any quart-sized recycled plastic container you don’t mind getting stained. Some people strain the vegetables out but I decided to keep my vegetables in the soak, in hopes there would be some patterns stamped against the eggs. Let it sit overnight.

    Get the eggs out and let it dry on paper towels or old newspapers. This is how my eggs looked just out of their color soup. Turmeric made yellow, red cabbage made blue, and beets made red.

    Easter Eggs dyed with beets, red cabbage and turmeric

    After they dried, more patterns emerged.

    Easter Eggs dyed with beets, red cabbage and turmeric

    Transfer the dried Easter eggs back into the egg cartons they came in originally. Refrigerate until Easter morning.

    Here are other ways to do this:
    Recipe from Full Circle
    Go Eco when Dyeing Eggs

    Have a great week and an egg-cellent Easter!

  • Green Eggs

    Green Eggs

    I started making green eggs when my daughter was a Dr. Seuss-loving toddler. I started out serving it as a sandwich spread, but now that my family is on a gluten-free diet, I serve it with salad. Let’s start with the recipe.

    Green Eggs

    Ingredients:
    1 organic avocado
    2 organic eggs
    salt and pepper to taste

    Boil eggs. For perfect yellow yolks, put eggs in a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a rolling boil on high then turn the burner off. Let eggs sit in hot water for 15 minutes. Pour out the hot water and replace with cold water. Let it sit for a few minutes, until eggs are cool enough to touch. Peel.

    Mash the avocado, then add eggs cut up roughly with a spoon. Mix together. Salt and pepper to taste.

    Here’s how I serve it nowadays:

    Green Eggs on salad

    Mine, left, on a heap of green salad – spinach, cucumber, red pepper.

    My daughter’s, top, on the side of 9 spinach leaves (for every year of her age), cucumber slices, and 5 tiny bits of red pepper.

    My husband’s, right, no green eggs. Just a salad and slices of deli turkey. He does not like green eggs and ham. He does not like it, Sam-I-am.