Crustless breakfast quiche

I have finally (by chance) hit upon a recipe for a breakfast quiche that Oliver likes to eat! It's not terribly quick, but it's easy to make and doesn't have a crust. This makes enough for Oliver and me to share for 3 breakfasts.

Before you get started --> heat your oven to 375 degrees and butter a 9" pie pan.

1. First, chop a medium/large onion coarsely and saute until nice and soft and turning brown in plenty of ghee or butter (I like ghee because it won't burn or turn brown the way butter will in a hot skillet). Ghee is easy to make by melting butter at a very low temperature for several hours, and then pouring off and saving the clear golden liquid to leave the milk solids at the bottom -- of course we use raw butter in our house, but you can use any kind.

2. Mix 5 eggs with 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp. cream. Blend well. Add one pinch of salt for each egg, plus 1-2 extra pinches (so 6-7 pinches in all). Be sure to use an unrefined natural sea salt, like Celtic, Eden, and Redmond brands, available in health food stores and some grocery stores. (I use pastured organically-raised eggs with raw grass-fed cream. Read my blog post comparing pastured with free-range eggs.)

3. Grate a sizeable chunk of cheese, enough to make about 2 cups grated (a chunk approximately 3"x3"x1"). I like to use raw milk grass-fed cheese with medium sharpness; it's fine to use a cheese that isn't the most delicious for snacking -- it will be great in the quiche.

4. Mix the caramelized onions and most of the cheese into the egg & cream mixture, reserving a bit to spread on top.

5. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top. Bake until slightly puffed and golden brown, approximately 45 minutes (begin checking at 35 minutes as some ovens can vary dramatically). Cook the quiche in the center of the oven.

I like to have this quiche with bacon and homemade sausage (from pastured pork), homemade yogurt with berries or homemade apple butter, homemade chicken bone broth, homemade beet kvass, and either fresh veggies or my homemade lactofermented veggie medley. Oliver alternates bites of quiche and bacon, has a spoonful of fermented veggie juice, 1/2 tsp. fermented cod liver oil, sips of beet kvass, and yogurt with apple butter for dessert. After breakfast he has the lukewarm broth in his sippy cup. This breakfast/brunch is so nourishing and filling that there's no need for lunch!

Store the leftover quiche in the fridge and reheat wedges in a 300-350 degree toaster oven for about 10 minutes.

Two-egg custard

This is one of my favorite breakfast standbys -- so simple that ANYONE can do it, yet impressive enough for company.

First, you will need a few small (4 oz. for a child, 6-7 oz. for an adult) ramekins. These are small ceramic dishes for cooking custards.

All you have to do is blend together (for a child's 4 oz. custard):
1 egg
1.5 T cream, sour cream, or yogurt
pinch of sea salt

Pour into the buttered ramekin. Sprinkle the top with grated raw milk cheese, and bake at 300 degrees in a double boiler (this is a fancy way of saying you should place the ramekin in an oven-proof dish partially filled with water). In my oven it takes about one hour, and after that time is very smooth and creamy. Be sure to check it starting at around 45 minutes. You want to get it out when it has just set -- insert a sharp knife in the center so you can see. It should still be very soft in the middle, though not liquid. You want to avoid it getting overdone because the egg will become spongy (with holes) and will not taste as good. Oliver definitely prefers a creamier custard that will hold its shape when removed from the dish.

For myself, I double this recipe and also put some fresh thyme leaves on top. (Not for Ollie since they pass right through his digestive system.) You may also place some crumbled bacon or sausage in the bottom of the ramekins before filling with custard.

We usually eat this with sausage or bacon, yogurt with apple butter, beet kvass, and fermented veggies. And yes, everything on this list, with the exception of the bacon, is homemade. :) Considering all the time I spend cooking and making all these healthy delicious foods I should really get to brag a little now and then!

It goes without saying that these should be pastured eggs, and ideally the cream should be raw and from a grass-fed cow. Bon appetit!

The incredible edible egg?

People in the government and the media love to talk about the dangers of raw milk, supposedly a food brimming with microscopic baddies just waiting to wreak havoc on your insides. Consuming raw dairy is described by the FDA as "inherently dangerous" and "like playing Russian roulette with your health." It's a slight relief to me that now a new breed of villain is on the scene: the EVIL EGG! Though of course I feel badly for the 1300+ people currently feeling the effects of salmonella poisoning.

I have been strongly chastised in the past for making it known that I feed Oliver raw egg yolks from pastured chickens (a highly nutritious and extremely digestible food). The CDC (Center for Disease Control) has trumpeted loud and clear on its website for who knows how long that it is dangerous to consume undercooked eggs -- a fact that has been brought to my attention more than once. No distinction is ever been mentioned between eggs from factory farms and eggs from small grass-based organic farms. However, in the matter of nutrition and food safety this makes ALL the difference. You really cannot have a discussion of food safety without talking about where your food is coming from.

If you go to a diner and order an omelet, this is where the eggs are coming from:


Appetizing, right? And yes, these eggs may very well be quite unsafe if consumed sunny-side up, soft-boiled, or raw -- or even well-cooked. It might even be dangerous just to touch one! But really, once you realize the conditions under which these eggs came into existence, you aren't likely to have an appetite for them no matter how they are cooked.

Compare this to the eggs from a happy, healthy chicken that lives mostly out of doors, eating lots of delicious earthworms and bugs, clover and grasses of all kinds, cracked organic corn, and maybe even occasional summer fruits, small reptiles, and scraps from the family's table.


This chicken gets plenty of sunshine and fresh air, and stores amazing amounts of omega-3 fats and the all-important fat-soluble vitamins A and D in its fat, skin, organs, and eggs (which contain 8 times more vitamin D than an egg from its battery-raised counterpart). (I don't have the stats on the vitamin A, omega-3s, choline, selenium, iron, zinc, and vitamin K2, but you can rest assured these are much higher, too.)

Much like the unhealthy environment of the sweatshops of the 19th and early 20th century (which severely undermined the health of every worker), animals raised in densely-packed confinement without light, air, and grass are going to be inherently unhealthy. They will produce meat, milk, and eggs that are at the very least lacking in nutrition if they are not downright dangerous. It is time to take a collective hard look at where our food is coming from and how it is being produced. And it's time to get as far away as we can from the industrial food system that is making our livestock, land, air, citizens, and small farming communities so very very unwell. Real food is something to be eagerly appreciated, to be treasured, enjoyed, and savored -- not something to fear.


I for one am grateful to the bottom of my heart that I can feed Oliver these nourishing and delicious breakfast custards every single day and know that they will be nothing but good for him.

March delivery from Raindance Farm

Last weekend was our monthly delivery of wonderful meats, raw milk cheese, sausages, bacon, and pastured eggs from Siobhan at Raindance Organic Farm. Oliver had a great time playing among the pile of meat packages while I tried to figure out how to fit everything into the freezer. I couldn't stop admiring the beautiful eggs! Aren't they absolutely gorgeous?! And that's just the outside.




Every time we get these deliveries of local foods that have been grown, raised, and produced with such care and attention I feel like I've had the loveliest Christmas ever all over again. We are so blessed to be able to enjoy these wonderful foods, while knowing the environment, the soil, the farmers, the local economy, the animals, and our health are all the better for it.

Rotten egg whites, anyone?

Yesterday I came across some notes from Paul Pitchford, who presented on healing foods while I was at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. At one point he talked at some length about eggs and how the white has the effect of gumming up the liver. Some cultures would apparently pack egg whites in ash and bury the whole thing for weeks, then eat it rotten! This would ensure it would break down properly in the liver. A much more palatable alternative is to simply eat something spicy with eggs, such as cayenne pepper, a hot spicy drink (as in Korea), or hot sauce (as in the Southwest and Mexico).

He also said that spicy peppers (such as chili, jalapeno, and habanero) help to cleanse the body, and do the following:
-transform mucoid excesses in lungs, liver, and gall bladder (as well as mucus
build-up from egg whites),
-remove plaque from heart and arteries,
-help with high blood pressure, heart inflammation, and blood clots,
-and remove amyloid plaque in the brain.

As if flavor weren't reason enough, here's another reason to incorporate some spice into your food, and consume your eggs in traditional ways!

In terms of eggs, the other thing to be aware of is cooking time/style. I eat raw egg yolks semi-regularly, as does Oliver, but raw egg whites are another thing entirely; for one, they are very hard to digest. This may not seem like a big deal, but our digestion (and whether it's proceeding properly) can have a big impact on how we feel. I have been noticing lately on a few occasions that I become very irritable after eating undercooked egg whites, specifically in the form of soft-boiled and poached eggs; I couldn't figure out why this would be and thought it had something to do with blood sugar. However, I also have been craving spicy foods with egg breakfasts lately, and looking back at some of the egg breakfasts I've enjoyed in the past, I can see that incorporating a spicy element really makes sense and has made a big difference. Such as in this breakfast, which includes jalapeno sauerkraut from Hawthorne Valley. I wasn't able to get more of this yesterday at the market as HV was not there, but the kim chee I picked up will do the trick for sure. Yet another lesson in the importance of listening to your body!

Poached eggs with bacon

This morning Hugo and I enjoyed poached eggs (from a small farm upstate) over sourdough toast (from Hawthorne Valley at the Greenmarket), and bacon (from Flying Pigs Farm, also purchased at the Greenmarket). Ollie had a few tastes of bacon and seemed to like it a lot. We also had baked apples with raw cream as a special brunch dessert. For perfect poached eggs, crack eggs into tea cups, then slip into gently boiling water and cook in gently bubbling water for exactly 2 minutes 20 seconds. Remove carefully with slotted spoon and allow to dry off briefly on paper towels. For baked apples, I wash and core them, then bake covered in a glass dish with a little water in the bottom and plenty of cinnamon - about 30-45 min. at 350 degrees.

Notes: Be sure to reserve the cooking water (which is like a cinnamon-apple syrup) to use as a light sweetener on yogurt or ice cream! Also the fat from high-quality bacon like this should be saved for frying potatoes and potatoes, or to be used as the shortening in Yorkshire pudding.