Category: Breakfast

Cathy’s Cooking Corner

This month I’m going to give you a recipe that I believe I’ve put in the newsletter before. I decided, however, that I wanted to put it in again for those of you who didn’t receive it the last time and for those of you who might like to add it to your recipes. It is probably the all around favorite way of baking chicken in our family. This recipe is super fast and easy to prepare. Butter chicken stars with pasture raised chickens because the butter enhances the superior flavor of the chicken so well.

Butter Chicken

1 chicken, whole or cut into halves or pieces
1/4 c. butter, melted
salt

For a whole chicken, brush the chicken with the butter. Sprinkle the whole chicken with the desired amount of salt. Set into a roaster and cover. Bake at 350 degrees 1 1/2 to 3 hours or till the chicken is tender. (The time will vary quite a bit between a 3 pound chicken and a five pound chicken.) You can add vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, onions, squash or sweet potatoes around the chicken and bake them with the chicken for a complete meal.

For chicken halves or pieces, sprinkle the underside of the chicken pieces with salt. Place them in a baking pan. Pour the butter over the chicken pieces and sprinkle the tops with salt. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for1 to 1 1/2 hours or till fully baked and tender. For an optional idea that we positively love, slice the desired amount of potatoes and place them in the bottom of the baking pan. Top the potatoes with onion slices and then with a little thyme. Place the chicken pieces on top and bake. Absolutely delicious!

Egg Omelet Sandwich with Grilled Bread

 
Gather the ingredients for your omelet. You will need a large or jumbo egg, butter, salt and whatever else you desire such as cheese, chopped onion, and cut up precooked chicken. Left over meats and veggies from other meals are great for omelets. It will give your omelets lots of variety. Do not use any pork, unless if you want to feel grumpy for the next five or six days.


Beat the egg with a fork.

Put a teaspoon or two of butter into a small skillet. Pour your egg into the skillet.

Add chopped onions, leftover pieces of chicken breast, cheese, etc.

When the omelet is cooked enough to flip, carefully flip with a spatula to brown the underside a bit.

Butter two pieces of bread. When the omelet is cooked through, remove it from the skillet and place the bread in the skillet butter side down. Grill it until it’s brown.  Make into a sandwich, adding tomato slices and mayonnaise. For an eat-as-you-drive breakfast, slide the sandwich into a sandwich bag to contain the crumbs and any drips. Enjoy your gourmet quick and easy breakfast!

Fried Egg with Salsa and Cheese


Fry your egg in a small amount of butter in your pan. As soon as you can, flip the egg and top with salsa and cheese.

Cover with a lid until the egg is cooked and the cheese is melted.

This is delicious with toast or grits.

Why We Do Not Raise and Sell Pork

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Pork is a main staple in America today and many people enjoy bacon and sausage with their eggs. However, just because "everyone else" is doing it doesn’t mean it is a good thing. With the poor health of the majority of Americans, we need to take a careful look at what "everyone else" is eating and make appropriate changes from what they are doing if we want to be healthy.

I mentioned the poor health of the majority of Americans. I say that because the number one industry in America is the care of sick people—what politicians call "health care". Americans are an unhealthy group of people propped up on prescription medications. The answer is not more doctors and more prescriptions. We believe, and most of you believe as well, that true health care reform needs to start at the food level.

The reform of our food to help others be healthy is the driving force behind why we are farming here at Jehovah-Jireh Farm. We are continually looking for ways to increase the nutritional quality of our eggs and meats.

So why don’t we raise pork? Pork is a negative energy meat that it causes your urine pH to go significantly acid. It takes six days of total abstinence from all pork before the urine pH return to normal. Pork affects one’s body pH for almost a week! Pork is also unique in that it can contaminate what it is cooked in or on, such as cookware or grills. The pork juice can not always be removed by washing the cookware and whatever is cooked in that cookware or on that grill will cause the pH of the urine to go acid! There are a number of people who could not get their pH’s to change until they got new cookware. We find that our urine pH often goes acid (5.5 pH) after we eat somewhere where pork has been cooked in the past, such as a grill, even though we are careful not to eat pork ourselves.

About a year ago Cathy’s mother had a cancerous skin spot removed. It was the same type of skin cancer that took her dad’s life. Her mom decided to go on the RBTI (Reams Biological Theory of Ionization) program.

Carey Reams developed the RBTI program years ago, and was able to help over 10,000 terminally ill patients whom the doctors had given up hope for. Many had cancer. Of the 10,000, he only lost five patients! Part of the RBTI food and mineral based program is to get the urine and saliva pH in the 6.4 range so that the body can heal.

About a month ago, Cathy’s mom went back to the doctor. He could not find any trace of the skin cancer or any of the precancerous spots that she has had for a number of years. She was ecstatic!

Several weeks ago she traveled to Alabama to attend a reunion and stayed in the home of one of Cathy’s cousins. She was served pork several times. When she got home she tested herself, and sure enough, her urine was very acid several days after she had eaten the pork.

Pork is in more things than I ever imagined. Pork is used to make gelatin. Unless the gelatin is kosher or specifically stated as being from a plant or bovine source, it is pork based. Medicine or herbal capsules are made of gelatin. That little capsule if made from pork, is working against your health. Even that small amount of pork in the capsule will cause the urine pH to go acid. Gelatin is in many products. Some are obvious, others are surprising. Jello is made from pork gelatin unless the box states that it is kosher. The Jell-O brand is kosher. Most marshmallows contain pork gelatin. Many candies have pork gelatin in them. Even the strong mints, Altoids, have gelatin in them.

Lard is another pork substance that is found in some potato chips and other foods, and will affect your pH. The Weston A. Price Foundation highly recommends lard and pasture raised pork. Their recommendations are based on copying the diets of primitive people groups, rather than from chemical tests of how the foods respond in the body. The Weston A. Price Foundation has a lot of good information. However, when it comes to pork, test it for yourself and see what happens. Use a small strip of pH paper that you can get at the health food store to test the pH of your urine. Then compare the color of the wet part of the pH paper with the color chart that comes with the pH paper to find the pH.

When a person’s pH goes acid it makes the body more susceptible to sickness, disease, and cancer. It also makes a person more irritable and have a tendency toward anger. We have noticed that in our family on numerous occasions after we have been somewhere that we ate pork or a pork ingredient. As a family we try to help each other out in avoiding pork, but we are not always successful.

Pork is not the only meat that will cause the body pH to go acid. Some of the other meats are tuna, shrimp and other shell fish (seafood), and the other meats that are listed in the Bible as unclean meats. There is a medical reason why they are listed as unclean meats. However, it is not for religious reasons that we avoid eating the "unclean" meats. We do not want to sell you a meat that will undermine your health and the health of those who eat at your table.

Instead of pork, we recommend our delicious pasture raised chicken. Cathy often takes leftover chicken and cuts it up into small pieces and adds it to our scrambled eggs or omelets. If you like bacon, get a type that specifically states that it does not have any pork in it and is nitrate free. For sausage, Cathy uses beef hamburger and seasons it to make into delicious beef sausage patties.

Simple Beef Sausage Recipe
1 pound hamburger
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp sage
1 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
1 1/2 tsp Wright’s Liquid Smoke
Mix well and make into small patties.

Cathy’s Cooking Tips

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I often roast chickens by adding vegetables and plenty of water to make lots of broth. However, I found out that there’s another great way to roast whole chickens. Add no water, but instead brush plenty of butter all over the birds. Then salt them and roast them as usual. It will still make rich broth, but the skin is crispier. Yes, go ahead and eat that skin. You miss a lot of nutrition from the Omega 3’s of grassfed poultry if you don’t.

The next morning you can take the broth from your roasted chicken and poach some organic grassfed eggs in it. This is definitely a favorite way for our family to eat eggs.

Have you ever hardboiled eggs, but when you went to peel them, the shells came off in little pieces with bits of eggs adhering to them? This happens because your eggs are too fresh. For the shell to come off easily, the eggs should be at least two weeks old. That is unless you cook them a different way than usual. Instead of adding your cold eggs to the water at the beginning and boiling them, bring the water to a boil first and then add your eggs with a slotted spoon. Bring to a boil again. Then proceed as usual by cooking them on lowest heat for 8 to 10 minutes and then cooling them quickly in ice water. Very fresh eggs will come out much better by using this method.

Egg burritos are a great breakfast food. To fill your tortillas, scramble some eggs and add some leftovers such as diced potato, chicken or sausage, rice and beans or any number of vegetables. Top with sautéed onions and sour cream, salsa or mayonnaise. Try mixing a little mustard into your scrambled eggs before they’re cooked. It gives an extra, wonderful little zip.

The Importance of a BIG Breakfast

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Several months ago we shared with you the account of the gigantic old-fashioned mountain breakfast of 75 years ago. I asked a number of questions: Should we change the order of the size of our meals with the largest meal at breakfast and the smallest meal in the evening? Does our body work best if it is operating off of the energy from the meal that we just ate, or does it work best refilling the body reserves with a big meal in the evening? Does eating a big meal in the evening and a small breakfast program our body to store the food we eat as fat for a reserve rather than flushing out the surplus?

We decided to try eating a big breakfast. Our whole family was pleased with the results. We found that we do not get as hungry the rest of the day, even when we do a lot of physical work like splitting firewood. We have more energy. We do not feel as much of a need for a mid-morning snack. Cathy was pleased to find she lost a little weight as well.

In researching about breakfast, I found that breakfast is an important meal of the day. Most of the food we eat passes through the stomach in about three hours and starts giving us the energy for the tasks at hand. It gives our brain energy to be able to think and function. Eating a big breakfast can help in weight control because it helps you eat fewer calories the rest of the day. When we eat a large meal in the evening and then do not exercise much, our bodies tend to store the excess food energy as fat.

Eggs are one of the best protein sources and are an important breakfast food for growing children who need protein to build strong bones and bodies. Eggs are an excellent quick breakfast food for adults as well. They have found that eggs do not contribute to cholesterol in adults like they used to say that they did. The best eggs are those from hens that are fed organic grains, have free access to the out of doors, sunlight, and can eat plenty of fresh greens. Our pasture raised eggs help you start your day right.

By the way, did you ever see how little grain is actually in a box of store bought cereal? I weighed out some wheat that was the same amount as the weight of a box of bran flakes. It only filled 1 1/2 inches in the bottom of the box! At $9.50 a bushel for wheat, the farmer would have received only about 17 cents for the food in a box of cereal! The box probably costs more than the grain.

Gigantic Breakfasts

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We thought that you would find the historical perspective of breakfasts in the Appalachian mountains interesting. Breakfast is an important meal. It gives us the energy we need after fasting for 12 hours or so during the night to go through the first half of our working day. The following is an excerpt from the cookbook, Mountain Country Cooking: A Gathering of the Best Recipes from the Smokies to the Blue Ridge by Mark Sohn.

"People may argue about what to serve for an old-fashioned mountain breakfast, but on one issue everyone agrees: Fifty to seventy-five years ago, mountain people ate gigantic breakfasts. Over the last seventy-five years, however, our lives and our breakfast have changed.

"I have observed three phases in the evolution of mountain country breakfasts. First, seventy-five years ago, just after the railroads pressed their steel tracks into mountain coal fields, breakfast was really big. The cook loaded the table with bacon, sausage, and pork chops – all at the same meal. If they were saving the pork chops for another day, they served ribs, back bones, fried chicken, or country ham.  With this they often ate fried potatoes or hash browns, buttermilk biscuits, breakfast sausage gravy, homemade blackberry jam, grits or hominy, and eggs, eggs, eggs. To top it off, they may have eaten apple or pumpkin pie, milk, juice, and coffee. These foods, which they called victuals, stuck to the ribs and supported outdoor labor until the mid-day lunch.

"In the 1950’s breakfasts got smaller. We traded toast for biscuits, the pie disappeared, and bacon, sausage, or ham often stood alone with eggs. Hot cereal or sweet potatoes sometimes managed a place on the table. We served milk, juice, and coffee, and perhaps hot or cold cereal."In recent years – the fat fighting  nineties – country cooks, like others, reserve eggs and bacon for special occasions. We worry about cholesterol. We cover dry cereal with skim or low-fat milk, we microwave a frozen bagel, or we lower a toaster pastry into the toaster. No time for hot cereal. No eggs. No pork chops. No cooking. It’s often an on-the-go breakfast."

After reading this account of the gigantic old-fashion mountain breakfast it got me to thinking. Should we change the order of the size of our meals with the largest meal at breakfast and the smallest meal in the evening? Does our body work best if it is operating off of the energy from the meal that we just ate, or does it work best refilling the body reserves with a big meal in the evening? Does eating a big meal in the evening and a small breakfast program our body to store the food we eat as fat for a reserve rather than flushing out the surplus? This is a subject worth researching and finding out more about it.