Yes Virginia, meatballs can be healthy #recipe

Meatballs might be the perfect food.  The satisfaction and nutrition of meat  in a vessel that enables infinite possibilities.  But it seems that most meatball recipes out there, no matter what the application (pasta sauce, swedish sauce, soups, etc.), the non-meat ingredients are usually minimal and simple, like breadcrumbs or onions.  This is an opportunity missed if you ask us! 

Low-Fat, High Vitamin Winter Squash Lasagna [recipe]

Just when you think you’ve had enough squash, there’s a lovely delicious lasagna recipe you just have to try. And after we tried it out, we’re adding it to short list of ideas for our 2016 Christmas dinner.  Squash replacing turkey!  

Squash PSA: Pizza Sauce Alternative

It all started with us sneaking shredded carrots into the layer of sauce of our pizzas. We covered this vegetable party with cheese, and not only did our kiddo not notice, we actually found that we loved the taste! We moved on to beetza, which is pizza with shredded beets snuck in. And then we got to thinking… what would happen if we switch out the sauce entirely?

Kale and Winter Squash Strata [recipe]

I am a huge fan of breakfast, I  wish we could have breakfast meals all day long!  It is one of the main reasons I wanted to get chickens, in order to have fresh eggs every day.

Whole Wheat Winter Squash Brownies. No really, they’ll change the way you bake [recipe]

When working with alternative flours like whole grains or gluten free, you might find that texture and moisture are suddenly problems you never had to deal with with standard all purpose flour.  How many whole wheat breads and gluten free cookies have you tried to enjoy that just crumbled in your mouth and left you needing a drink?  We’ve found a solution to the dryness that comes with alternative healthy flours that is not only easy, but it results in a lower fat, higher fiber treat that anyone will enjoy.

Mac & Cheese with a Hidden Health Boost of Squash [recipe]

Hiding vegetables in meals is so fun. The obvious benefit is that it gets kids to eat some nice vitamins and fiber without any flashbacks to traumatic cabbage experiments. But for us it’s not just about feeding our kids healthy food, it’s really more about enhancing the food we eat in general. I find it so gratifying to take a comfort food that is notoriously unhealthy yet delicious, swap in some healthiness, and still enjoy it as an addictive comfort food. Fatty, carbo-loaded mac and cheese, meet your new best friend: pureed squash.

An Old Hen Braised in Dark Beer: Cooking Coq au Vin, but with beer and a laying chicken [Recipe]

Coq au vin is traditionally an old rooster cooked for many hours in wine. We don’t have any old roosters in the freezer, but we do have a few old hens. That could work. But you know, it would really be a wasted opportunity to only modify one component of the classic coq au vin recipe.

A Simple and Local Thanksgiving without too much fuss

All week we’ve been sharing some new recipes that really showcase local meat and vegetables without much fuss. The recipes are easy, the tastes are pure, and the shopping lists are short. If you’re looking for a way to change things up this year or what to bring something special to a dinner someone else is hosting, we invite you to try one of our very own recipes this holiday. And the best thing? You can probably find almost all of these ingredients locally! 

Mashed Kale Sweet Potatoes [recipe]

This won’t be so much a recipe as much as a reflection on the power of keeping things basic. This side dish is so elegantly simple it comes out great even when you make multiple so-called mistakes. While there are cooks out there seeking the perfect consistency of their mashed potatoes using special tools, other people are busy playing with their kids and end up steaming veggies for “a while”. A chef will practice hundreds of iterations of a recipe trying to find the right balance of salt and spice, and normal people occasionally forget the salt entirely. With flavorful kale and sweet potato as the stars, this recipe will take whatever you throw (or don’t throw) at it. And it’s mighty nutritious. 

Turkey with 100 Cloves of Garlic [recipe with gluten free gravy]

Captain’s log, stardate -307097.0319634703. We have travelled through a wormhole and entered a peculiar dinner star system in the Plimoth Alpha sector on a most critical mission of gastrophysical research. These early Earth inhabitants consume a large domesticated fowl, known to them as “turkey” and surround it with illogical amounts of a cousin plant to the now extinct onion. They call this “turkey with 100 cloves”. We are here to observe and attempt to understand the event that changed the course of human history forever. This garlicky dish directly led to the development of our transporter.