Each year my friends Nancy and Andy raise a couple of pigs on their farm: one for their family and one for ours. Nancy’s 8 year-old daughter is a master pig scrambler, selecting the first piglet at the Monmouth Agricultural Fair and then we buy another one to round out the pair. They’re fed on culled fruits and vegetables from our gardens and the produce section of our local supermarket and natural grains provide them with the protein they need. It only takes three or four months for them to balloon from puppy-sized piglets to the 125 pound finished product. By the time the snow flies, the freezer is packed with the most wholesome pork we can source. It feels great to know that our food is raised humanely, naturally, and locally, and the finished product is super lean and tasty.
But using up that much meat—in addition to the chickens we raise and the local beef we buy—can be a challenge, and it inspires me to seek out new ways to keep it interesting. Eight or ten years ago I adapted a recipe from a cooking magazine for a Moroccan Pork Loin for my catering business; it’s an exciting way to spice up the tender but bland tenderloin and sirloin cuts of pork. After marinating in an easy olive oil and spice paste, the meat is cooked on a bed of sliced onions. And while the meat benefits from a soak in the spices, you can very well skip that step and do the recipe start to finish with good results and have a tasty and healthy meal on the table in about an hour.
Guiding Stars Web Community Specialist Jaica Kinsman provided the perfect foil for the Moroccan pork loin, a light, bright, and veggie-intense Athenian Couscous Salad, very similar to the Wheat Berry Salad we featured recently on this website but even easier to put together. The combination of the smoky cinnamon-cumin spice mix on the pork, the sweet onions that form the cooking base for the meat, and the colorful, tart, and texturally-exciting salad form a healthy and impressive dish that I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to serve to any of my clients, let alone my family and friends... Read more »
Greek Yogurt
Erin Dow
Guiding Stars Expert Chef
Guiding Stars Expert Chef Erin Dow balances three food worlds. As a mother of three young children, she’s fighting the battle every parent faces: how to keep her kids interested in the foods that keep them healthy. As the chef and owner of her catering company Eatswell Farm, she utilizes original recipes and techniques--focused on enhancing the enjoyment of locally-sourced ingredients--to best interpret the client’s vision. And as Consulting Executive Chef for Falmouth-based Professional Catering Services, a business specializing in production and backstage catering for concerts, she develops and executes menus that accommodate the strict nutritional requirements of the music industry elite. Erin and her family raise their own chicken for meat and eggs, have dabbled in pastured Narragansett turkeys, and have a very weedy but very large and productive garden.
Other posts by Erin Dow
I couldn’t live without yogurt. It’s my go-to breakfast and snack, convenient protein source, and low-fat lunch. I add it to a cake batter to moisten it, add it to muffin batter to bump the protein and extend the shelf life, and I’ve drained it and used it in savory dips and spreads.
I often mix 3 tablespoons per cup with milk to substitute for buttermilk in pancakes, waffles, and biscuits. I love full-fat yogurt, but I generally reserved that for an occasional treat, sticking instead with a part-skim version for general use.
A couple of weeks ago I picked up a couple of containers of Greek yogurt to try. I’d heard enough about it but I had never really had any use for it, since what I had been doing had been working just fine. But with one mouthful, I was utterly hooked, and I don’t know why someone didn’t tell me about it sooner.
For those unfamiliar with it, Greek yogurt is regular cow’s milk yogurt that has been drained of excess moisture, leaving a... Read more »