Over the past few months I’ve changed my relationship with these sourdough beasties I’ve befriended to leaven and flavor my baked goods. I’ve both expanded the amount and variety of goods that I can make with them and I’ve let the little things be warm and active for longer periods. That is to say by keeping my sourdough active I’ve been forced to bake more with it and have thus figured out new and varied breads that can be made as sourdough.

The whole point, for me, of baking with sourdough is to use a biologically diverse population of microbes to populate the dough I make to allow a slower rise through fermentation. This process is active and alive and breaks down the stuff in wheat that is hard on human digestion (gluten) or makes other things (like minerals) inaccessible through human digestion (phytic acid)

Percentage of Phytic Acid

Time (hours)
—- Yeast Fermentation
___ Sourdough Fermentation

For more than you probably want to know about phytic acid and the extra measures you could go to to eliminate your intake of it go here.

The fact that phytic acid is in all foods that are originally seeds (grains, nut, legumes) and that it binds to certain minerals and nutrients in the body and essentially flushes them out, doing the body little good, is a fact that is not debated. What the impact is of the amount eaten on the body’s overall health is not agreed upon. But just think of how many seeds we eat: wheat, corn, soy, nuts. Since these foods are present in practically every meal, I like to error on the side of caution and avoid the anti-nutrients as much as possible. Here is a nice outline of why a sourdough ferment of grains is good for health (In fact that blog, just linked to, is one I’ve just discovered, and it full of great sourdough recipes. I haven’t tried any yet, but plan to…check it out!)

So that’s the motivation in trying to replace as many baked-goods as possible with their (I think more delicious) sourdough versions. Once you get beyond artisan crusty bread loafs from a good bakery it is hard to find an array of true sourdough items. Even if you find something that is “sourdough” that doesn’t necessarily mean that all the flour has gone through a minimum four hour ferment, a lot of sourdough is added as flavor.

As usual the best control over health, quality, and taste is just to make it at home, not to mention the saved plastic packaging and inexpensive ingredients which may make the cost of the homemade lower (though it depends on what you were buying). Below are some of the snacks I’ve put through the sourdough process. And I should mention that the recipes for these lovely eats all come from the same book, Wild Bread by Lisa Rayner. For the most part I like her recipes, but she is vegan so she often suggests Earth Balance over butter which to me is a very unwise substitution. It just boggles me that one can be so into natural and whole foods but prefer a product that requires a laboratory to make and comes in plastic over one that can be made and eaten out in a field.

In addition to getting a new book that expanded my sense of what I could do with my sourdough, I also starting using it (the starter) a bit differently. First of all I started a whole wheat starter from my white one, so now I have two (The whole wheat is local from Massa Organics!) I keep the whole wheat one dryer (or stiffer, or to get technical, at a lower hydration- 75% which would be 3/4c water to 1c flour. 100% is an even one to one.) I also stopped putting the starter in the fridge after use. I keep some in the fridge for back up, but I keep the active one warm and fed…that way, when I want to bake I don’t have to back track the time it takes a cold starter to get going. If you keep your refrigerated tarter fed consistently you can get it going in 8hrs but it’s hard for me to remember to do so if I don’t see it. (Ofen it would be a two day process just to be able to use the thing…) Rather than get the out-of-sight-out-of-mind problem, I leave them out, which reminds me to feed them, which gets me to bake.

Crunchy whole wheat crackers:

There are fewer and fewer aisles in the grocery store I even go down at all and the cracker/cookie aisle is one of them. Even if natural or organic it’s still just plan old cooked wheat (or popped rice) and it just doesn’t do me much good. But crackers are great! For homemade hummus, tuna salad, or a sharp raw cheddar. If you already have made your own pizza dough, crackers are just as easy.

These are a 100% whole grain cracker  The recipe uses only 6oz of starter plus 8oz of any combination of tasty flours you might have such as rye, spelt, kamut. (I’ve used various mixes of wheat, rye, spelt as that’s what I tend to have on hand. The majority of the dough has been wheat though). (Also added is 2 Tbs olive oil, 1/2 tsp salt, and just under a half cup of water.)

After the dough is mixed and kneaded into a stiff ball it can sit for a few hours. (Lisa Rayner says you can let it sit for as little as 20 minutes, but that time frame doesn’t really do the fermenting job. I just let it go until I notice it being bigger…about four hours.) The dough is rolled as thin as you can manage onto a floured board and/or on parchment paper without going beyond the point that you can lift the strips onto your baking sheet. I had tried baking just the rolled out dough, figuring I could just break it into crackers after it cooked…but it ended up too uneven, not crunchy in the middle and burnt on the edges, so it is worth it to cut and cook strips…they can be a very rough cut.

This is a good opportunity to train your nose to when something is done. The crackers should be checked after five minutes and rotated and shaken around. They should get all the way to a nice caramel brown…but the tipping point to burnt is quick…so keep a careful eye (and nose!) I added Celtic sea salt and sesame seeds to the top before cutting the dough…lots of possibilities with toppings.

Everyone has these nostalgic foods from childhood that they just can’t help feeling great when they eat them. I am all for having good emotional memory with food…but often the actual substance from the past isn’t really all that great (in taste or health). I grew up in a very whole foods lacto/ovo/fish vegetarian household that didn’t include really any junk food. I could be easily motivated to do something if it involved some sort of illicit food…like a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin (though we still got it without the bacon/sausage). So, I’ve taken this childhood reward and made it the kind of thing I still want to eat.

The dough is the standard “artisan dough” in the Wild Bread book with a whopping 20 oz of starter, just about 7 oz of starter under 3 oz of water and 1.5 tsp of salt. This mixture rises in a bowl, then gets rolled out and cut to rise again as muffins.

Then the fun part! The muffins like fat pancake on a lightly buttered griddle. I ended up cooking them longer that this photo shows. In order to get them cooked through they should have a decent amount of color on both sides.

Then I cooked up an egg. This trick above doesn’t really work all that well, maybe if the ring was oiled better. The other option might be to make bigger muffins. I break the yoke after it cooks for a bit so it isn’t too drippy for the sandwich. Add some raw jack cheese, oblong fried potato cake not included and I certainly earned it!

Below shows the basic loaf bread I’ve been making on a weekly basis (give or take). It’s the same dough as the English muffin. I use a mix of my whole wheat and white starter and use either fresh ground wheat berries (also from Massa Organics), or fresh ground spelt, or just Massa’s flour which is ground fresher than anything else you can buy. This is a pretty similar recipe as the Nourishing Traditions loaf made in this post, but you can see how it’s lightened up a bit. This has to do with an even wetter dough and also a double proof, once in a bowl and once in the buttered loaf pan.

It’s a pretty nice, go-to whole grain loaf for toast and snacks. But I am pretty excited about trying this one from the recently discovered Wild Yeast Blog. I think something even lighter would do us better for sandwiches (the bread below is pretty limited to open-faced, which are delicious. Two pieces at once would be a mouthful)

This bread is a sourdough “quick bread” in that it is made from a batter and is not kneaded. But no, it isn’t quick.

A few words on the time it takes to make these baked goods: This point is related to one of Michael Pollan’s new food rules that you can eat junk food, just make it yourself. When you cook at home you can control ingredients and you don’t have access to the kind of processing or additives that happens on an industrial scale. You also find that “junk foods” take a long time to make and are energy intensive, versus simple whole foods. As I write this post I am actually taking a week without dairy, sugar, or grains. This is just a just an opportunity to eat really simply and avoid foods that can be harder on digestion than others.

I think taking a break from anything you eat a lot of is probably a good idea…seasonal variation does this with fruits and veggies and even some meats and certainly pastured eggs, but the constants can be…well just that. Really milk and grains would be more seasonal in a more locally-based food system.

I don’t know if I would go as far as saying the foods that you do the least to are the foods we should be eating. That essentially would be advocating a raw diet. I do think human digestion needs some careful processing to break down cellulose and other compounds we don’t have the stomachs for. But it is true that many of the foods you can eat “whole” are good for you and the more “whole” you eat a food the faster it is to eat it. An apple can be picked and eaten right at the same moment. Meat- well a life is made and raise and then killed, but after that it’s pretty much eaten as is. Bread on the other hand, even good, whole grain, naturally leavened bread goes through a number of steps. This isn’t a hard and fast rule by any means but the point is if we limited our baked-good intake to sourdough bread we made at home, we would probably eat a lot less bread and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

So, I’m happy to have created a system with bread that is rather self-limiting and happy to be taking a bit of a break…but also really happy to get back to baking soon. This bread below could be adapted into any number of quick bread loaf pan recipes like banana bread. I’ve just done this cinnamon raisin version and it’s lovely, moist, sour and delicious. I am pretty sure it could also be adapted into muffins, which is an experiment I am excited about and will certainly share. I’ve never seem to come across a true sourdough (that is, fully fermented) muffin recipe. I think it might involve some baking soda…but well see. Stay tuned.

                          

Increasingly we seem to learn that there is mainly only disadvantage in the heavy processing and even the fortifying of foods. The more we learn about what whole foods have to offer, the more we seem to figure out that our refined-then-”enriched” versions are weak or even detrimental in comparison. A recent study of folic acid fortification shows flaws in the thinking that a vitamin is a vitamin is a vitamin no matter what the form or context.

Whole grains and greens are rich in folate, a B vitamin which has shown to be protective against colon cancer and other bowel issues and is just generally important for overall health. Folate deficiencies also cause fetal neural tube defects and thus pregnant women are urged to take a folic acid supplement. Folic acid is the supplement form of folate, and (doctors urging aside) does not impart the same positive results for cancer risk and whole-food derive folate. In fact as a recent NY Times article outlines, folic acid enriched foods may increase cancer risk.

This particular study lucked out with an easy control group (nutritional studies are difficult because control groups are hard to maintain) for folic acid consumption because Norway do not enrich their food with it like we do here in the US (lucky for the researchers and the Norwegians too apparently)

Turns out that folic acid enriched foods, mainly grains and cereals…um eaten particularly by children, increase cancer risk. So…no advantage there at all.

(Careful readers will note that the study of B vitamin consumption was originally aimed at understanding the relationship between B vitamins and heart disease, not cancer. In the previous post, on sick ancient Egyptians, this relationship was brought up as the likely cause of ancient cardio problems as the Egyptian Elite ate refined grains and were deficient in B vitamins that keep in check an amino acid that breaks down cell walls (which cholesterol goes in to fix…) I will not be at all surprised if the findings for b vitamins supplements (versus the stuff in whole foods) fails to show an impact on heart disease, but that will not be a good enough reason to discount the relationship until they look at food in the form it should be eaten. Maybe a start in the right direction to show the relationship to cancer)

Okay, so food in its most whole form provides all the nutrition we need without the fiddling from food scientists. Lesson: Avoid food with health claims and stick to those that have no package at all. That said, there are ways to “enrich” whole foods yourself and that is by pairing them with foods that help your body absorb all the goodness. And yes, this point loops back to the point about good fat and it being important and not causing heart disease.

I recently read author Nina Planck’s Real Food, What to Eat and Why. Of all of the points she made, I think the rundown of the usefulness of good quality whole fats in the diet was the most important. So I am just going to quote her verbatim: You can keep this all in mind with any catchy “holiday health hints” or such that tell you not to eat your turkey skin or eat low-fat dairy.

Eating protein with fat makes nutritional sense, because all food, and protein in particular , requires fat for proper digestion. As we saw with “rabbit starvation, without fat in the diet, digestion fails and you starve, but not for lack of calories. What is true of meat is true of all fat-and-protein pairs. They go together. Consider, for example, two near-perfect foods: eggs and milk. Both foods are a complete nutritional package, designed for a growing organism’s exclusive nutrition, and must contain everything the body needs to assimilate the nutrients they contain. The fats in the egg yolk aid digestion of the protein in the white, and lecithin in the yolk aid metabolism of its cholesterol. The butterfat in milk facilitates protein digestion, and saturated fat in particular is required to absorb the calcium. Calcium, in turn, requires vitamins A and D to be properly assimilated, and they are found only in the butterfat. Finally vitamin A is required for production of bile salts that enable the body to digest protein. Without the butterfat, then, you don’t get the best of the protein, fat-soluble vitamins, or calcium from milk. That’s why I don’t eat, and cannot recommend, egg white omelets and skim milk. They are low-quality, incomplete foods.

In each classic pair, fats help the body assimilate, use, or convert essential nutrient.

Fat and protein
Roast chicken (with the skin)
Eggs (with the yolks)

Fat and vitamins
Vitamins A, D,E and K are fat-soluble, eat them with fat

Fat and Beta-Carotene
Buttered carrots
Collards with fatback
Spinach salad with bacon
Flank steak with arugula
Beef with broccoli

Saturated fat and Omega-3 fats
Fish with butter or cream sauce

Saturated fat and calcium
Whole milk
Yogurt, cheese, and sour cream made from whole milk.

Each new piece of research reminds me that the most we should do with food is grow it in healthy soil, and prepare it in a way that our bodies can best use it. For some things that means raw (like dairy and fruit), eaten cooked or raw with some useful fats (like most veggies and meats), or fermented (particularly cabbage and other meant-to-ferment veggies as well as grains, ie sourdough, and some legumes ie soy)

Here are some particularly delicious whole meals:

                          

The first was a goodbye to Nancy’s whole milk yogurt. (sigh) I love Ken Kesey, I love Oregon, I love their containers. What I don’t love   is explained in the letter below that I sent through their website. I’ll let you know if I get a response.

Unless they can prove some careful way of preparing their powdered milk I will stick to Straus, which uses just whole milk and cultures.

Dear Nancy’s,

I am confused about discrepancy between the statements on your whole-milk products and your website which denounce the use of thickeners and your ingredient list which has non-fat milk powder as an additional ingredient to whole milk and cultures.

After years of eating your yogurt I have now switched to Straus Yogurt, who has nothing in their whole milk yogurt but whole milk. I eat whole-fat products because we need the fat to absorb the calcium and other nutrients and because low-fat products are processed foods which I stay away from. A main ingredient of low-fat foods I am interested in avoiding is powdered milk, used often to add body and flavor to a depleted product. Milk should not be subject to high heat as it damages the fats. As explained by Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food “powered milk contains oxidized cholesterol, which scientists believe is much worse for your arteries than ordinary cholesterol.”

So, why on earth do you add powdered milk to your whole milk products? And even more confounding, why do you say in multiple places that you only use “pure milk” or that “Because we take the extra time to fully culture our products, they are naturally thick and creamy. We never add ingredients that are meant to stabilise or thicken dairy products.” While non-fat milk powder isn’t artificial, it is still a processed food that hardly qualifies as pure. You may be following the letter of your statements but not the spirit.

I have shared the switch to Straus yogurt on my food blog, www.mindtomouth.org, and would welcome your comments if you care to explain the reason that you use non-fat milk powder and whether or not you have an explanation as why its use is consistent with your statements about not adding thickeners and only using pure milk.

Regards,

Sage

Okay, the second one is tricky, and honestly I don’t feel like I’ve gotten enough good information to make a really informed decision about the use of this product. But I feel like the lack of consistent information is what has made me decide to just avoid it.

I was attracted to agave because it is cheaper than maple syrup and, honestly, I was being well-marketed to. Lots of natural processed foods had agave on the label and that made them easier to buy (like ketchup or cookies). I was eating it on waffles and yogurt (Nancy’s whole milk at that point…).

The Weston A Price foundation recently published a piece about agave in their journal that explained agave’s high fructose levels as just as detrimental to the body as the High Fructose Corn Syrup. Both were explained as subject to industrial processing and should be avoided. You can see that report here (its a pdf).

But I don’t like to just follow WAPF blindly, and after looking into the brand I bought (Madhava) it seemed like there might be two different products, the syrup from the Blue Agave, same as tequila, and the syrup from the Salmiana agave, and two different processing methods, Blue agave using heat and possibly chemicals to extract the syrup and the Salmiana syrup is apparently processed using ” gentle enzymatic action”.

So the controversy actually gets a bit weird and comes down to two or three people with known and unknown special interests. There is not a lot of neutral information about agave and quotes from various sources (health blogs etc) about its production seem too come back to the same two sources (see articles below). The biggest problem I couldn’t solve is whether or not agave contains starch. That seems like a pretty straight forward inquiry.

Natural News published two articles that cover the question of the quality and healthfulness of the syrup (everyone agrees that it is not a traditional sweetener as the process for extraction was developed in the 90’s, and I think this is ultimately why WAPF is opposed).

One, the anti-agave side, is written by Rami Nagel and based on information largely from this guy Russ Bianchi (who has some company, adept solution inc. that has no website…). Nagel was the co-author on the WAPF article which is also dependent on a good deal of information about  agave processing from Bianchi. (It was a bit frustrating to see a lack of more rigorous fact-finding on the part of WAPF who I depend on for reliable information, just goes to show to always check out multiple sources).

The other article is a rebuttal to Nagel’s piece written by the owner of Madhava. He seems to know Bianchi personally and have some negative feelings about the problems Bianchi’s opinions about agave has caused to the industry. His information is convincing, but vague- things like “enzymatic processes” are not explained in a functional way, so it leads me to feel there is more marketing involved than education.

At this point the whole thing became too much. I tried to parse out whether or not what I had been dripping on waffles was really going to hurt me, which seemed to come down how bad high level of fructose are for you, which seemed to come down to starch. Again, this could not be verified as there was too much conflicting information. The most consistent info did seem to come down in favor of agave, particularly on the glycemic index measure (which I think is misleading because it only looks at glucose, not fructose). I decided that just on the basis of it being a new process and a weird three-guy controversy I was just going to avoid it. (Not to mention the politics involved, and use of indigenous land and labor…)

Ultimately, I decided to put my mouth in charge and when I really really tasted the agave it just seemed a bit too intense. So raw honey and maple syrup it is. There is a positive side to these good sweeteners being expensive- forced moderation. I think that the taste-test is the ultimate lesson because many foods, not just agave, are mired in controversy (traditional fats for one) and it just doesn’t seem worth precious time to get caught up in the back and forth on the ever un-verifiable internet. I know that Straus tastes better than Nancy’s and Agave tastes processed and super sweet.

I think having good information about a product provides us with a much needed limit in choice when it comes to packaged food, but just a quick glance at the back of a product is revealing- if you need to research it, it is probably best avoided.

                          

Notes on the first step: getting the starter working. Depending on its level of activity, or the last time you fed it, it can take a couple days to get going. Start with just a scant 1/4 of a cup, because you don’t need much for the bread. You will add an 1/8 cup of water and an 1/8 cup of (white) flour. You will then have a total of a 1/2 cup and your next feeding will continue this ratio of equal parts water to flour, doubling the amount of starter. So you can see how much you can make very quickly. If your starter is particularly dormant then you will need to feed it for longer, thus making more starter. You can dump some out and keep the level down…but! If you don’t want to do this you can plan a very delicious waffle breakfast after starting your bread. See this post for recipes. Using the starter means the phytic acid in the wheat is neutralized so its not blocking the nutrients in the other good stuff on the waffle. I used all white just to go full on pastry texture, but you could mix in whole wheat or other the night before.

Whole Milk Nancy's yogurt (which is pretty much like ice cream), Almond Butter, Grade B Maple Syrup, Raw Butter, and Late Spring Strawberries

Okay, back to the bread. So the first step is basically making a bowl of whole wheat starter and letting it sit, covered (plastic bag works well) for 12 hours. Breadtopia suggests this be the “evening of day one” but my schedule is weird and time to make bread varies so sometimes I use different 12hr periods, depending.

12 hrs from mixing together the starter and WW flour, you add the rest of the flours (spelt, rye, white, more WW) more water and salt. As much attention as the no-knead bread has gotten, I think that the kneading step is not just fun for the sake of bread making, but useful for getting a good sense of how the dough is doing. I once made the no-knead and couldn’t tell that is hadn’t risen (too long a proof and not very strong starter) until it was out of the oven, because you aren’t touching it and seeing how it feels. So this step of kneading for ten minutes is useful, and good exercise. I look at the clock to make sure I do a full ten (otherwise I’m too lazy).

The kneaded dough then goes in a bowl, covered with the same plastic bag, in the refrigerator to 24 hrs. This stage is where you can be more flexible about the timing. The first time I made the the end of the 24hrs ended up being at 8am, which was before work, but! it needs to sit and get warm and comfy for another 5hrs before going in the oven. I ended up coming home during lunch and baking it. This is a totally avoidable situation. If you find that the timing doesn’t line up for taking it out of the fridge and then baking 5hrs later, you can punch down the dough in the fridge before its fully rise (that is before the first 24hrs) and let it go another 24 or so. Ex: First step at 8pm Monday, second (mixing dough, kneading) at 8 am Tuesday, 24hrs later is 8am Wednesday but I don’t have time to deal with it then- so at 5pm on Tuesday I punch it down. Now, I am set to take it out at 5pm Wednesday and bake at 10pm (which works for me).

This is a lot for bread, I realize. And I think in the last post on this I admitted that it is probably too much and gives a good argument for specialization. But its interesting and delicious, very nourishing and getting easier. Plus, it turns out well even when not perfect.

Last loaf: I took it out of the fridge at 5pm and let it sit covered with plastic in the bowl until 10 (at 9:30 I pre-heated the oven, with the dutch oven inside). But, that isn’t whats supposed to happen. For some reason I completely forgot the step of taking it out of the bowl, forming a “boule” and putting it in on a floured towel, and then back in the bowl (covered, not with plastic, but more floured towel). I realized this as the action to put it in the smoking hot dutch oven felt different then before. But it was too late at that point and I just waited a half hour to see what happened.

Maybe not bakery-goods, but it was no fail.

I even think the crumb (the quality of holes in the interior, usually indicating moist, chewyness) turned out better than the last. The texture of the crust is different, but I woulnd’t even call it weird. That’s the thing with baking, often the variation is just that- not a mistake but a new way, a new texture, a new flavor. Punching down the dough and letting proof longer makes a more sour dough and really works the fermentation, that was a surprise and a delight (to avoid this acutally use more starter). Again, I don’t really know how useful it is for us all to be making our own bread, but I like to eat something and to know just how it got to be the way it is.

                          

I actually don’t do too much variety in breakfast because it is the time of day where route muscle memory serves well, and I don’t like to have to think too much about what I am doing. For most of my life I really relied on packaged cereal for breakfast and snacks, okay and dinners. I was a very picky eater and would get stressed out when I couldn’t manage to figure out something to eat so cold cereal was always, so to speak, on the table. Despite being expensive with too much packaging the process for making cereal just isn’t ideal. The high heat treatment of grains is akin to burning your cooking oil- rancidity and the creation of free radicals. Read about the concerns here. So in effort to get more goodness out of our morning meal we turned to porridge.

When I was eleven my parents and took a bike trip to Scotland, touring around the Outer Hebrides and staying at family owned B&B’s. At these rural cottages, if you wanted oatmeal for breakfast you would need to tell your gracious host the night before. At the time I thought that they cooked the oats all night, but now I realize they must have been soaking them. This is a great example of how traditional food preparation techniques are great resources for age-old knowledge on how to eat and cook.

All grains and legumes contain phytic acid. Traditional diets have historically processed grains and legumes to reduce this kind of anti-nutrient. Here is an explanation (for even more follow the link and learn away!)

The amount of minerals your digestive system can extract from a food depends in part on the food’s phytic acid content. Phytic acid is a molecule that traps certain minerals (iron, zinc, magnesium, calcium), preventing their absorption. Raw grains and legumes contain a lot of it, meaning you can only absorb a fraction of the minerals present in them.

Soaking and, even more so, sprouting and fermentation are processing techniques that make our food much better for us and the thing is people already have known this for much longer than we have forgotten it and many traditional diets still use these techniques even if they don’t know why)

So with all that as a foundation, we have started to start our day with oats soaked at least 12 hours in yogurt or whey.

(Mix the yogurt or whey into the oats and add 1c water for each cup oats

cover with lid and keep at room temp)

After some soaking has been allowed the oats are then boiled 1 to 1 with water for a very brief time. In addition to making the oats better for you soaking also makes cooking very quick! The result is a creamy rich slightly soured porridge that is very filling and satisfying. I only end up needing about a half cup, mixing in honey, and some whole raw milk (okay I even sprinkle a little brown sugar still even though it’s bad, I just find such delight in that combination, hopefully my power oats can trump the sugar’s depletion tendencies)

When no oats have been soaked my mainstay breakfast is an egg with toast. We are all over the danger of eggs now right? I don’t need to go into this? If you are having any reservations, or you still have some lingering doubt when you enjoy this super food read this Wellness Letter from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health (see, it isn’t even a Weston A Price source, believe me it is no longer controversial that eggs are very good for you)

The toast is from the Alvarado St. Bakery which makes all sorts of bread products from sprouted grains and are generally a great company. This slice even happens to come from the sprouted sourdough loaf (double whammy) The butter is cultured (bought that way from Organic Valley, Clover also uses cultured cream) and the jam is homemade strawberry.

This was clearly a day-off morning as I don’t usually have time for pots. But this is actually a pretty quick side dish. Cut up the potatoes (I prefer for most things the little waxy or thin skinned ones, red or yellow) into pretty small pieces like two-hole Lego piece sized. Then just saute with olive oil, salt and pepper and throw in some herbs towards the end so they (the herbs) stay fresh. I used parsely. Many would also do garlic, but I have an aversion to garlic in the AM.