Nourishing Breakfast--Bird Nest Eggs and a Tip

I thought I'd have to bow out of this week's Real Food Wednesday, till I visited Katie's blog and saw her great egg recipes. I'm totally copying her egg motif! The theme of this week's carnival is healthy kid-friendly recipes.

I saw the idea for bird nest eggs on a childhood friend's facebook and made them myself. Big hit with my kids!

First make homemade hash browns. Boil potatoes--as many as you'd like. (I did this the night before.) Grate or shred. Salt and pepper, then brown in a skillet in coconut oil or butter. My cast iron skillet resulted in a nice crispy crust.

Separately, fry eggs over easy (remember, these need to be from pastured chickens for optimal healthfulness...I'm working on finding a source of healthy eggs). You'll want one egg for each person, per serving.

Arrange a pile of hash browns on each person's plate in the shape of a nest. Place a fried egg in the dished-out center. Now you have an egg in your nest!

You could also add some kind of yummy, healthful meat to your hash browns if you'd like. Ideally, this would be served with fruit and yogurt on the side, or something along that line.

My kids loved bird nest eggs. They were getting sick of scrambled eggs, so this was something that tasted different, as well as having an imaginative name!

On a totally different note, my kids are not picky at all and they love veggies. They really do. The other day my warped children were begging their daddy for the squash he got at the restaurant. They eat things other kids won't touch.

I've asked myself why. I think it's due to a number of things.

1. I exclusively breastfeed for 6 months. No solids, not even rice cereal.

2. I don't use baby food. From day one on solids, my kids are fed mashed up real food, fruits and veggies at first. (I avoid high allergy foods, of course.) They never know that Gerber Pineapple Delight exists. Their first food experiences are real food.

3. I don't fix "kid food." When we eat chicken, the kids don't get chicken nuggets, when we have spaghetti I don't order them pizza.

4. They don't have to eat what I fix if they don't like it or aren't hungry, but I don't fix special foods for them if they choose not to eat what is on their plates.

5. They have grown some of their own food. They might not like squash if their only experience had been the store variety, but when they had ownership in growing it, it became special. They watched and waited for it to be ready to eat, and since they grew it, of course they thought it was good!

Check out more great ideas at Cheeseslave.

Simple Homemade Chicken Soup

Cheeseslave is hosting Real Food Wednesdays this week with the theme of bone broth recipes. Having grown up making foods from scratch I thought everyone knew how to cook a basic soup. like this one. The other day when I was talking to a friend, I realized this isn't the case. So here's my contribution! Hope it's helpful!

Simple Homemade Chicken Soup

1 roasted chicken (free range if you can get it--I can't so I use what I have)
6 stalks celery
6 carrots
1 onion
2 potatoes
1 small bag frozen green beans (or fresh green beans)
garlic
salt and pepper to taste

Debone chicken and refrigerate meat. Use bones to cook stock according to Nourishing Traditions or one of the great recipes available online. Strain out bones.

Now you have lots of delicious, nourishing stock!

Chop onions, carrots, and celery into pieces as large or small as you like. You are doing this because you want to cook your harder veggies first--they take longer. I like to cut my onion fairly small and slice the carrots and celery in slices about 1/4" thick.

Bring stock to boil (I start with at least a gallon) and add the veggies you've already chopped. You want the broth to be cooking your veggies at a nice steady boil, but not a violent rolling boil. Medium heat should do it. They should be done within 30 minutes. You want them crisp-tender at this point, like crispy stir fried veggies. Truthfully, I just boil away until they are done. Check your soup periodically to make sure your stock is not all boiling away.

Cut potatoes into 1 inch chunks and add to soup. Add green beans. Add chopped fresh garlic to taste...Or I use minced garlic from the jar. I don't know if that is NT kosher or not!

Continue cooking till the potatoes and beans are soft. Add meat.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

My kids beg me for this soup when they are sick. Turns out chicken soup really is good for what ails you! It's great to keep broth and cooked chicken in the freezer for quick soups...When I am sick and unable to take all the time to make stock, debone chicken, etc. it's nice to be able to put it together quickly!

Dairy Free "Ice Cream"

::~Oops! The only picture I have is the strawberry version! We can imagine it's chocolate, right?!~::

The Nourishing Gourmet is having a carnival of healthful chocolate desserts in honor of Valentine's Day. This was a popular post when I first ran it, so I thought it would be worth posting again.

This one is a great alternative for those who must avoid dairy or who don't have access to raw milk from grass fed cows--or in my case, both.

Peel and freeze a bunch of very ripe bananas. I freeze them on a cookie sheet so they don't stick together and then tranfer them to a ziploc bag.

When you're ready to make the "ice cream," chunk a couple frozen bananas up and blend in the blender with a little water or rice milk or whatever liquid you have on hand. Just pulse it slowly till it's nice and creamy, and I promise you, it will have the exact consistency of soft serve ice cream. You can eat it plain...Add a little vanilla...a glob of nut butter...a few frozen strawberries (as pictured)...a spoonful of carob powder...Lots of possibilities.

Of course, since this is a chocolate/carob carnival, I will advocate the carob version! Some nut butter and carob powder really compliments the banana flavor and gives it a nice rich smoothness. I haven' t tried it with cocoa powder but I would like to some time. It's been soooo yummy every way I've made it.

I was amazed at how good it was. We served this to friends one night, and they later told me that their freezer is now full of frozen bananas, too. You don't have to be a health food nut to enjoy this.