Breakfast "taco" salad

Well, the winter kinda just keeps coming. I put my winter boots and ski shoes away last week, only to go get them out again on Monday morning. I am happy for all the precipitation though - the farmers will be resting much easier now than a few months ago when it looked like pure drought. I am starting to wonder when the spring green onions will get to show themselves, and when I'll be able to get some seeds in the ground! It's looking like it will be well into April before the soil is thawing. I did come across this handy guide to dates for planting vegetables from the U of MN extension though, just to get the ideas percolating.

I usually try to get in a big bunch of veggies in the morning - reference past piles of food or carrot porridge - and typically that means I cook a bunch early. The time change means that I am generally eating breakfast with the sunrise, which feels quite lovely. The other morning I was not in the mood to cook, and instead made a big delicious salad with bacon-y eggs and some homemade salsa from last fall. It was sort of like a breakfast burrito, without the burrito. And a little reminiscent of the Modern Times' amazing lime-cabbage slaw, which I LOVE. Because it was largely raw, it had a fresh, spring like quality. Which you know - bring it on. It is the equinox afterall!

Breakfast salad (use however much you are hungry for)
Purple cabbage, sliced thin
Green onion, chopped thin
Parsley or cilantro, chopped
fresh lime juice
olive oil
2-3 eggs
bacon
salsa
salt

1. Slice the cabbage as thin as you can manage, and toss in a bowl with chopped green onion and parsley or cilantro. Squeeze fresh lime juice over the top, sprinkle salt, and drizzle with olive oil.
2. Chop bacon and saute in a cast iron skillet on medium until crispy, about 5-8 minutes. Pour in 2 whisked eggs, salt and cook until done. Add a good amount of salsa to eggs towards end of cooking, or alternatively, spoon salsa over salad.
3. Serve eggs with salsa over cabbage slaw.
*This would of course be amazing with avocado if you wanted to go really wild!

Paleo Venison-Braised Burritos

Last year my friend Conrad made me a fajita dinner where he used Cabbage leaves as the taco shell. Up until that time, I had tried to use lettuce leaves as the "tortilla" - or I just made a big taco salad of sorts. Cabbage leaf as tortilla = Fantastic.

I also wanted to try a recipe from Nom Nom Palo for Oven-Braised Mexican Beef - which is a slow-cooked (3 hours) recipe that includes some salsa, chicken broth, chili powder, onions, etc. The meat turned out very tasty, though I wanted even more spice. I'll make this again, but will really amp up the spices - I found that I wanted more of a mole sauce with chocolate and chipotle. (I ended up sprinkling unsweetened chocolate powder on there, which added a nice touch.) I wondered if people make beef mole sauce, and it turns out they do, though of course chicken is most common. Until I get to my own beef mole, here is her recipe that I used (which is very easy) with slight modifications:

Oven-Braised Mexican Beef (or Venison):

Nom Nom Paleo's lovely photo

2½ pounds boneless beef short ribs, brisket, or stew meat cut into 1½-inch cubes
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon chipotle
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon coconut oil or fat of choice
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
6 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed (optional)
2 T unsweetened chocolate powder, or 2 oz. 80% chocolate
½ cup roasted salsa (I used my homemade salsa and then added some liquid smoke)
½ cup chicken stock
½ teaspoon gf fish sauce (I used some anchovy paste)

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees; position oven rack in bottom 1/3 of oven.
2. In a large bowl blend beef, spices, and salt. Stir to cover meat evenly.
3. In a large casserole dish, melt fat and add onions. When translucent, add tomato paste, garlic, and chocolate. Stir and cook for 30 seconds to coat onions. Add beef, salsa, stock and fish sauce/anchovy paste. Bring to a boil.
4. Cover and place in oven for 3 hours or until beef is tender. Taste for seasoning and adjust in needed.

I served mine with some sauteed peppers, more salsa, and lettuce, all wrapped in steamed red cabbage leaves. To steam the cabbage leaves, it works best to put the whole cabbage head in a large steamer pot. Cut out the core first, and then set the cabbage core side down in the steamer. After 15 minutes, the outer layers should easily peel off. Continue steaming to get more layers, and stop whenever you have enough. You can lay the fixings inside and wrap it up, or you can do a tight roll. Photo here is the looser variety (with a different filling, but you get the idea!) *You can do this with raw cabbage too, it just tears as it comes off of the cabbage.

Salsa! Canned Tomatoes!

This weekend I finally canned some things...thanks to KP and 25lbs of tomatoes. Both of us are fairly novice at the canning business, but KP has some family history. Which sort of says something - having seen it done and maybe not being so worried about botulism (like others of us were). Except grandma's technique to not boil the jars a second time seemed a little too risky, even to KP. Canning is scientific, and though we debated following the salsa recipe allotment of 2 cups (!) lemon juice or just putting lemon in each jar, we ultimately followed the recipe. The lemon juice functions as the additional acid needed to prevent botulism, and apparently tomatoes hover below the right amount of acidity - especially with onions and peppers. Interestingly, you need to use bottled lemon juice - I am still not clear why. I think in the future I might try to find citric acid though (way more concentrated), because 2 c. of lemon juice adds a lot of liquid.

There are lots of salsa and tomato canning recipes online. KP found this salsa recipe that is a good amount of kick. The orange and red heirlooms also made for stunning jars.

Canning was definitely an all day project- especially with the pots we had which held only 4 jars at a time. Phase two for canning includes getting another pot...maybe the actual canning kind?! FYI: 25lbs of tomatoes = 9 pints of salsa and 7 quarts of tomatoes, approximately.