Deconstructed Hollandaise Raw Egg Appetizer

I belong to a traditional nutrition club that meets once  a month. It is based on the work of Dr. Weston Price and Dr. Francis Pottenger, among others. Every month we have a speaker or a topic for discussion. Last year we had a meeting about about raw animal foods. Every traditional society ate some animal foods raw. One example is steak tartare. I wanted to bring something unique, as someone had already said she was bringing steak tartare. I thought about it and searched the internet for ideas.

Earlier that year I had tried eating raw egg yolks and loved them. It wasn't that far from soft boiled eggs, which my mother made for me as a child. When eating eggs over easy, I always try to cut away the white and pick up the whole yolk on my fork so that none of it breaks onto the plate. I searched for raw egg yolk appetizers that I could make for the meeting. There were a few but none really caught my imagination. One night my family was having asparagus and I made hollandaise sauce to go along with it. That became my inspiration for Deconstructed Hollandaise. I brought the lemon butter in a thermos to keep it the right temperature. I separated the eggs into plastic shot glasses and topped them with the lemon butter. It was a hit with most people. It's Hollandaise! What's not to like?

Warm 1 stick of butter (1/2 cup) in a saucepan. Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and a dash of white pepper.

Put one tablespoon of lemon butter into the serving cup.

Separate the yolk from the egg

Add the yolk to the cup. 

Deconstructed Hollandaise Raw Egg appetizer

1 stick of salted butter

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

dash white pepper

eggs

Warm 1 stick of butter (1/2 cup) in a saucepan. Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and a dash of white pepper. Put one tablespoon of lemon butter into the serving cup. Separate the yolk from the egg.  Add the yolk to the cup. Enjoy!

There is lemon butter left over, so you could make it smaller buy using 1/3 stick of butter and 1 tsp lemon juice. After you try it, you might decide a tablespoon per yolk is too stingy or maybe too lavish. Play around with it.

I'll bet you think I left something out. How do you eat it, you say?  Plop it into your mouth like taking a shot of tequila. I suppose you could use a spoon but why dirty another utensil?

Too many greens? Make this Green Chowder

This is my third year having a subscription to a CSA. (what is a CSA?) Each farm has been excellent to work with. The customer service and food quality have been great. The problem I still have is getting too much food of what I don't want and not enough of what I do want.  Last year I got a huge box of food every week. It was an extremely hot summer. There was a little wilting from the heat. I had to hurry to pick up the box and quickly get the greens into the cold water bath to reinvigorate them, wash them and put them into the fridge. This chore took up to 2 hours every Thursday. I still have spinach in the freezer from those days. Every delivery is a new adventure. I am delighted to receive things that you only get if you grow them your self like garlic scapes and heirloom varieties. The boxes contain foods I love and my kids will eat. Usually we never got enough of those kinds of veggies. I also have a medium size garden. Sometimes there is just too much food to manage. It stresses me out because I don't want to waste any of it. Only a few of the foods don't freeze well, so I just need to time to work on it.

In the early part of the season comes a lot of known and unknown greens. I didn't grow up eating cooked greens. I have learned to grow and cook them but a little goes a long way. I'm not too fond of them.  I know kale smoothies are all the rage these days. I think eating kale raw is a mistake if done more than once in a while. It's a digestion and assimilation issue. Plus, raw kale is goitrogenic. I purchased Greens, Glorious Greens!, a cookbook with some new ideas. I tried a few recipes with varying results.There are more I need to try, though some are too carby for me.  I recommend this cookbook (caveat: the song from Ice Age 2  might get stuck in your head. Yes, I know it's from Oliver but I like this one.)

I love supporting local food. It makes sense economically, nutritionally, and sustainably. The food is fresher, more nutrient dense and uses less energy to deliver it to the customer. The CSA I have this year is a very small one. I was friends with the farmers before they started the CSA. I respect them 100%. Having heard their lectures on gardening, I know their food as the very highest quality available. Yet, I'm still frustrated by the greens.

Here's one of my coping mechanisms - Green Chowder. (I was going to call it WTF CSA!? Chowder, but I thought I should be nice.) I got the idea from this Onion Puree Soup Recipe, which the author used to alleviate  urinary tract infection symptoms. That recipe starts with sauteing four kinds of onions in a stick of butter, adding water and pureeing it with the blender. It is a pretty good soup and successfully worked for the intended purpose. It is a very nice base for any kind of cream-of soup and it doesn't call for any flour. The idea with the recipe below is to create a thick chowder base and change the seasonings to make different soups. I have made it with chard, spinach, kale, arugula, dandelions and stuff I can't identify. The first CSA year was a cold spring. I got LOTS of green onions from the CSA plus from my garden.

Green Chowder Base
Ingredient amounts are based on quantities of the greens you are using up. Use more fat and broth as needed.

2-3 tablespoons fat (chicken fat, lard, bacon fat, beef tallow, coconut oil, olive oil, butter - whatever you want to cook with)
bunches of greens, washed, stems trimmed as needed
1 quart of bone broth
1 onion, chopped  (optional)
1 few cloves of garlic (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

Wash and trim your greens. Chopping is unnecessary (but it depends on your blender). Heat the stock pot to medium high. Add fat/oil until shimmering. Add onion and garlic if using. Add a bunch of greens. Put the lid on and let it wilt. Check on it in a few minutes and stir it around. Add broth. Do you have more greens? add them in batches. Put the lid on until wilted.

Get out the blender or immersion blender (preferred). Puree the whole thing until no identifiable particles remain. If you didn't chop the greens beforehand, you may need to turn off the stick blender and pull pieces out of the blade from time to time. Taste your creation  to know how much salt and pepper to add.

Ideas for this chowder: 

• eat it as is
• add meat and vegetables for texture and flavor
• Add some heavy cream or butter and make cream-of asparagus soup, broccoli soup, carrot soup, cauliflower soup, mushroom soup... 
• Add chicken and lemon juice or make it into Avgolemono.
• It  might make a nice green Vichyssoise
• Thai inspired: 2 cups chowder, 1 can of coconut milk, 1 teaspoon chili paste, 1-2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger, garlic, lime juice, fresh cilantro or basil
• Southern greens inspired: add bacon and 1-2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• Tex Mex inspired: chorizo, onions, bell peppers, garlic, tomatoes, green chilies (or spicier kinds like jalapeno), chili powder, fresh cilantro
• Gazpacho: who says you have to eat it hot? Chill it, then add tomatoes, tomato juice, cucumbers, celery, bell peppers, avocado, Tabasco, etc.. then blend it all again
• Italian inspired: tomato sauce, italian herbs (basil, oregano), olive oil, Parmesan cheese, some ground beef or italian sausage
• Italian wedding soup: sausage, meatballs, cooked chicken or maybe pasta, italian herbs
• German green bean soup - fresh or frozen green beans, potatoes, ham, bacon or polish sausage and the key herb is summer savory
• Sauerkraut soup: 1-2 cups sauerkraut, pork or polish sausage
• Goulash: tomato paste, beef stew meat, paprika, onions. 
• German potato soup: cook peeled, diced potatoes in the chowder with a bay leaf and black pepper. Add some bacon, ham or ground beef.
• New England Clam Chowder: clams, potatoes, celery, bacon, cream
• Bean, split pea or lentil soup: I would cook the legumes separately, mix them into this chowder and simmer it some more.
• chill and mix it with sour cream or cream cheese and fresh herbs as a dip 
• Curry: cook down this base, add curry spices, meat, paneer, or chickpeas. Maybe base it on Saag Paneer

So you get the idea. It can use up greens you don't really want to eat and maybe other leftover foods too. When I want to make a specific soup like Italian Wedding Soup or Goulash, I google it and read a few of the recipes until I have an idea of what is generally in the dish. I compare that with what I have on hand and try it out. 

Enormous Zucchini

I happened upon a fantastic thing today - Disappearing Zucchini Quiche. I had a baseball bat sized zucchini from my garden. I didn't know what I was going to do with it. To start, I peeled it, cut it in quarters lengthwise and seeded it. Then I sliced it vertically into spears and ran it through my food processor with the shredder blade. I mixed it with salt and sat it in a colander in the sink for a few hours while I went back to work. I considered fermenting it like sauerkraut.

Later I found a recipe for I Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Crab Crab Cakes, which are basically, Old Bay seasoned zucchini latkes. I never do a good job with these. They never firm up. They stick to the pan. I get the pan temp wrong. It's awful. They ended up mushy and reeking of the fat I cooked it in. Blech.

While I was researching what to do with this zucchini, my oldest daughter said that she LOVES quiche. My sister-in-law bakes quiche often and she had tried it over there. So I threw together a crustless quiche with the rest of the zucchini completely based on what I had. Here goes:

Disappearing Zucchini Quiche

Preheat oven to 350F.

whisk together

7-8 eggs

1/2 cup milk

toss with

~ 2.5 cups of shredded, salted and drained zucchini

~ 2 cups of shredded cheddar

~ 1 cup bacon bits

Grease rectangular baking pan. I used a 8 x 11.5 x 2in pyrex dish. Pour whole thing in there. Move it around a little to make sure the zucchini is well distributed. It was done in about 25-30 minutes. I turned off the oven and tossed a cup of shredded cheddar on the top. and let it melt. Notice I added no seasonings. There was already a lot of salt from the zucchini, cheese and bacon.

The amazing thing was that I COULD NOT tell that there was zucchini in this dish. It completely melded with the texture of the egg. My oldest daughter loved it. She is taking it for lunch tomorrow.

My son cracked us all up with his suffering. First, his Dad said we were having eggs for dinner. He used an outraged and whiny tone of voice.

My son exclaimed, "Eggs!?! For DINNER?!?".

Then I said, "No, it is quiche."

"Quiche? Why do we have to have quiche?! Oh, look there's CHEESE on top of it! Why does there have to be cheese?"

"There's cheese inside of it too."

"Awwwww!!"

I served it and said, "Wow, I can't tell there's zucchini in here at all."

"ZUCCHINI!"

Every time he protested, we couldn't help but laugh. Poor guy. Of course, he hated it after one bite.

Have a heart for Valentine's Day!

I'm in favor of nose to tail eating. Organ meats are very nutritious. My mother served liver often. I don't remember there being a big deal about it. One time a neighbor girl was over for dinner. Her father was a grocery store manager. She said she only ate steak, so my mother called it "liver-steak". Tongue is also delicious. It is a very tender meat.

I have tried cooking beef heart a few times. It tastes like a cross between liver and steak. It can be cooked like steak. I researched a lot of recipes online. So far, I'm more successful when I make stew out of it. I have made Beef Burgundy from Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet. It was pretty good. I liked it but my family was lukewarm about it. I found it is a little better mixed with stew meat.

This recipe tastes like classic American beef stew.

1 beef heart

2 lbs stew meat

1 bottle stout ale

1 can of tomato paste

2 bay leaves

6 cloves garlic

1 TB dried minced onions (or 1/4 cup minced fresh onions)

1.5 tsp dried thyme

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

lard or tallow for frying

water maybe

5-6 potatoes, 5-6 carrots, peeled and chopped into bite size pieces.

1 small bag of frozen peas

Chop up the heart into very small pieces, like the size of playing dice. Brown meat in lard or tallow. Deglaze pan with bottle of beer. Scrape up bits off bottom of pan. Add tomato paste, 2 TB balsamic vinegar, thyme, dried onions, bay leaves, salt and pepper. Add to meat. The recipe does not have a lot of water so that a thickening agent is not needed later.

(Here's the goofy part. It ended up being about 5 lbs of meat. I weighed the meat and sauce and put half in the freezer. I put the other half in the slow cooker.)

Cover the meat with the peeled and chopped potatoes and carrots. You have to eyeball this. Use the ratio of meat to vegetables that you prefer. Cook it on low for 8 hours.

At serving time I added water, more balsamic to taste and the frozen peas. The peas warm up from the heat of the stew.

Cabbage

I was about to post a comment on Kelly the Kitchen Kop's blog about frugal eating. I thought of cabbage. Cabbage is an incredibly inexpensive vegetable. You get a LOT of food for a little money. It is high in vitamins, fills you up and is low in calories. These are cool graphs describing its nutrition. My mother-in-law got ulcer relief by drinking cabbage juice made with a juicer.

It has been a staple in the diet of many cuisines. I didn't grow up eating all that much of it, considering my mother was raised Mennonite. The only dishes I remember are borscht and cabbage rolls. She loves sauerkraut but we never ate it. I like it a little bit as a garnish like pickles. Cabbage is great in salads. Kalyn's Kitchen has great Thai cabbage salads and coleslaws. Cabbage is surprisingly good sauteed with bacon. Many Chinese dishes contain stir-fried cabbage.

I threw together this borscht recipe from memory. I am totally guessing at the amounts of things. That's how I cook :) This recipe is intended for a 6-8 quart dutch oven pot. I only know how to make an enormous stockpot of this soup. When I make soup I tend to just keep adding and switching to a bigger pot. This is the kind of borscht eaten in summer because most of these ingredients are available then. It is also known as Ukrainian borscht.

Mennonite Borscht
beef stock or water
3 large carrots, peeled and chopped
1 large white or yellow onion, chopped
1 large beet, peeled and chopped
2 large potatoes, peeled and chopped (optional for low-carbers)
1 pound beef stew meat, diced (cooked or uncooked)

1/2 green pepper, chopped
1/2 cabbage, chopped
1/2 cup fresh dill, chopped
1 can tomato paste
salt, pepper, sugar

This can be made with uncooked meat, added in the beginning or with cooked meat added with the cabbage. Pork or chicken could be substituted for beef. Other root vegetables like turnips could be included in this recipe.

Put 1 tablespoon salt, carrots, onion, beets, potatoes, (raw meat) into a dutch oven with 1 quart of water or stock. Cook on medium heat until vegetables are soft and meat is cooked. Add (cooked meat), green pepper, cabbage, fresh dill, tomato paste. Add water/stock to fill the pot if more is needed. After cabbage is soft, taste soup to adjust seasonings. Add salt and pepper to taste. Sometimes 1-2 teaspoons of sugar balance the flavors.

Serve borscht with a dollop of sour cream or plain yogurt. The freezes well except the potatoes get a little weird.

Cheese, Kefir, Kombucha, OH MY

Adventures in cheese making
In a previous post, I mentioned that I had ½ gallon milk that I was turning into kefir in my warm closet. I didn’t like any of the batches made in the closet. There also seems to be an off flavor that reminds me of goat cheese. Although some people love that, it’s not for me. They taste fresher and less sour if I make them on the kitchen counter. I ended up draining the ½ gallon of kefir and making sort of a cream cheese/sour cream substance. I threw it into salad dressing and chip dip. The day I decided to drain it, I happened to notice that an almost full gallon of raw, whole milk seemed to be sour. It was about 12 days since purchase. I went to work and spent my lunch and breaks finding ideas what I should do with it. My coworker, Ravi, put his wife on the phone. She told me how to make paneer, an Indian style of cheese. Now I had a plan! When I got home, the milk jug seemed a lot more empty. I asked my husband about it and he said the kids had been drinking it. Even the boy drank it! Later that day I observed Cassie saying to herself, “Let me have some more of that sour milk.” I asked her if she liked it a little sour and she said yes. I didn’t try it, so I don’t know how far gone it was. I just think it’s kind of funny that I thought it was sour and the kids drank it anyway.

The other night I made butter with raw cream and a jar. Here is how I did it. I posted it on Facebook and my friend Alice says it is fun only once. I think she is right.

Sauerkraut story
When I made sauerkraut the first time, I used only salt and packed it into the plastic, one-gallon sun tea jar. The second time I made it, I packed it away in there but I had less of it, so I decided to follow the instructions from Nourishing Traditions. I used less salt and I added whey. I put it into one half-gallon canning jar and one quart canning jar. About 1 week later I went into the cupboard to get out something else and found the ½ gallon jar had broken from the pressure. I am really disappointed because that was the larger amount and it was so much work. With broken glass, you have to throw it all away. The other one had also expanded so I dumped it out and put it in a former pickle jar which is larger. It wasn’t ready yet, so I put it back into the cabinet. I topped it off with more whey in order to keep it submerged. The dumb thing about this is that I still have a large jar of purchased sauerkraut in the fridge.

Fermented beverages
I broke down and bought water kefir grains (WKG) and a kombucha mother from Cultures for Health. I rehydrated the WKG according to the instructions. Then I set up the first batch of water kefir. I made it with only water and white sugar. I tasted it after 24 hours and it was still sweet. I don’t know what this is supposed to taste like. It seemed just like sugar water; there was no fermented flavor. Tonight I added the juice of 2 lemons to make lemonade with it. I put it in bottles for the secondary fermentation for a couple days before drinking it. The idea is to offer my kids an additional healthy beverage that they might enjoy. Beth tried it and she thought it was OK. I have been scouring the internet looking for good recipes.

I started the kombucha 6 days ago. The paper coffee filter covering it has the date it was made, in case I lose track of time. I made a black, Chinese tea (Yunnan Noir from Adagio) that I don’t care for all that much, assuming that the culture eats up a lot of the sugar/tea flavor. Every now and then I pull the jar out and check the mother. I talk nicely to it, like one of my plants. Yesterday I went to the grocery store and bought 2 bottles of plain kombucha to have as a yardstick. I compared mine to the commercial product. I noticed an odd flavor in mine, and then I recognized it as the black tea I used. It was still quite sweet, so I put it back. Because I don’t want to drink a lot of sugar, it needs to go for 14-20 days. I let Cassie and Beth try the commercial kombucha. Beth hated it but Cassie liked it.

While searching the internet for good kombucha information, I ran across an eBook about laboratory studies that were done in 1995 on thousands of batches. The eBook was $15 and I considered it a worthy investment if it leads me to the best practices of making kombucha. It was written by a kombucha enthusiast to demystify and debunk the mythology that goes along with kombucha. From what I read, the best results are with an equal amount of black and green tea. White sugar and brown sugar lead to different but not bad results. It’s a very technical book. I’m haven’t finished reading the book and I hope it goes into health benefits.

I wonder how all of these fermented beverages will fit into my lifestyle. Just one of them should be enough to sustain good health over the course of a lifetime. I’m the only one drinking the milk kefir. The kombucha might have the same outcome. I really hope the kids like the water kefir. We have this idea in the U.S. that if a little is good, more is better. It seems counter-productive to drink lots of different kinds of fermented beverages every day. Each one of these evolved in different places. They were not used all together. Keeping these cultures alive feels like a commitment, like having pets.

Real Food Challenge - week 4

Day #22: Why you should eat red meat.
Day #23: Pasture & Meadow. Eat your bacon, eggs and lard too.
Day #24: Homemade broth and stock.
Day #25: Not-so-awful Offal.
Day #26: Fish and seafood.
Day #27: Grow your foodshed.
Day #28: Beyond the challenge.




Why you should eat red meat
For many years I have been aware of the problems with our food supply, especially meat. If you are aware of it, you have to willfully ignore it when you eat it. For about 6 months, most of our meat has been purchased directly from the farmers that grew it. We still buy lunch meat, bags of chicken breasts and bacon now and then. It is difficult switching from old patterns. With the low fat craze, chicken became a staple in the American diet. Pastured chicken is more of a luxury than a staple. I have a whole chicken in my freezer that cost $18! I have so much broth, that I won't roast it until we make room for more broth. Buying meat this way is considerably more expensive. One thing I have noticed is that I am satisfied with eating a smaller portion. I'm sure that says something about the quality of the meat.


I liked the article about the nutrition in meat. My 6-year-old son is super picky. He'll eat ground beef, hamburgers and hotdogs but he won't eat stew meat or roast beef. It just doesn't look good to him. I held up a gallon jar and a coffee mug. I told him the coffee mug is meat and the gallon jar is vegetables. We all know there are lots of vitamins in vegetables. If you eat this much meat (coffee mug) you will get even more vitamins than all the vitmains in this much vegetables (gallon jar). He was quite impressed, but he is just not able to eat something he thinks is going to taste bad. All I can do is continue to offer it.


Eat your bacon, eggs and lard too
Our egg sources have been pastured for about a year. I was getting them from a family at church who live in an area that allows chickens. I think her egg production dropped off in winter. Now I get them from the farmers at my nutrition group. We eat about 1.5 dozen eggs a week. Sometimes we run low and have to buy the cage-free eggs from the grocery store. They seem to be equal in quality, but I don't really trust it. Buying directly from the chicken owner is totally different.


All of my meat sources carry beef and pork. Saturday I went to the Geneva Winter Market. Hasselmann Farms has good bacon prices but he was out of bacon. I bought the ham for Easter. Last week I cooked prok "steaks". I bought them because they seemed to be like pork chops but they were a little fattier and much less expensive. I could not believe how delicious they were!




Homemade broth and stock
I wish I could convince my family to eat more of it. This week 3 people in our family had a cough. I implored my husband to defrost the soup and sip it all day instead of tea. Soup is another thiing my son doesn't like. For many years I have tried all kinds of ways to make chicken soup. Long before I found traditional nutrition I was simmering chicken bones for broth. It took a lot of trial and error to figure out that is the best soup. If we buy a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, I always save the bones for soup. I also freeze bones, old celery and onion tops for making broth later. The Frugal Gourmet passed on the idea of saving the onion ends whenever an onion is chopped. Most people throw this stuff out but it can be made into wholesome food before throwing it away.


Not-so-awful Offal
I like offal for the novelty as well as the nutrition. I like to fry up a chicken liver to have with eggs in the morning. Sometimes I get so fed up with my son's complaining about normal food, I make liver, heart or oxtails just to really push his button! I picked up some chicken heads and feet from the Amish at the WAPF conference. I showed them to my kids because gross things don't freak them out. One time I was making broth and talking to my husband. He looked into the pot right as a head floated by. He got so freaked out, I had to laugh! It is sort of a Halloween thing to see a head or a chicken foot floating in soup.


My mom grew up on a farm near Winnipeg. Her parents were German Mennonite immigrants from the Ukraine. They had dairy cows, pigs and chickens. It has been very interesting hearing how her parents grew and preserved food using traditional methods. She told me that they put beef hearts in a huge steintopf and covered them with whey. She enjoyed head cheese, liver, heart and other offal. They ate chicken about once a month. My grandmother would slaughter a hen if she thought it wasn't laying. Sometimes she would find eggs inside the chicken in various states of development. She would be so sorry because this one was laying. She gathered those small yolks and made a cake with them. That one chicken, along with side dishes, fed all 8 people in her family. She roasted the head and feet. Oma liked the head very much. My Aunt Mary's favorite part of the chicken is the neck, because she usually ended up with that part at dinner.


Fish and seafood
We don't eat much fish, though I enjoy it. Lake Michigan is very close but people where I live don't eat the fish from it. It is considered a dangerous thing to do. How sad is that? Just this week we had salmon from Costco. I'm pretty sure it was farmed fish, which is not the best nutritional or environmental choice. This is really tough. I keep reading about overfishing and pollutants in the fish.


Grow your foodshed & Beyond the challenge
This was a fun experience. I enjoyed receiving the emails and trying new things. I have an update on the sauerkraut and the cheesemaking. I'll have to post it a little later when I have more time. I should have posted more pictures. As you can tell, I don't get around to blogging much.
Going forward, I plan to continue doing what I've been doing. I'm looking forward to spring and planting my garden. I haven't planned what I'll grow yet, but it always works out. I'm inspired by the people at my Traditional Nutrition club.


Here's the checklist

• Stay Natural & Unrefined. Eat only natural, whole foods in their unrefined state.
• Avoid Modern, Processed Foods. Avoid processed, packaged, refined foods even those sold as "natural" foods. If you're great-great-great-great-great grandmother wouldn't recognize it, don't eat it.
• Sour, sprout or soak. If you eat grain, beans, legumes, nuts or seeds, make sure that you properly prepare them to maximize your body's ability to assimilate their nutrients.
• Love healthy fats. Enjoy wholesome, healthy, unrefined natural fats liberally - and especially on your vegetables.
• Brew mineral-rich stock. Make homemade, mineral-rich broth and stock weekly, and consume it daily.
• Eat grass-fed, pasture-raised and wild-caught. Eat meat, including offal, and make sure it's from a trusted source that relies on traditional methods of raising their animals: on fresh pasture.
• Keep dairy raw and fresh. If you eat dairy, keep it raw or, at the very least, make sure it comes from grass-fed animals and is not subject to ultra-high-temperature pasteurization.
• Get Your Good Bacteria. Consume naturally fermented, probiotic foods and beverages daily.
• Get involved. Grow your foodshed and give back to the community. Fight for farmers and consumers rights and against the industrialization of our food supply.
• Maximize nutrient density of your foods by preparing and consuming them with time-honored tradition.