These delicious eggy muffins are easy to whip up and throw in the oven while you prepare your GAPS™ milkshake.

Makes about a dozen

• 1 pound ground pork (or other ground meat, sausage is very nice)
• 1 Tablespoon butter, coconut oil or lard
• 2 teaspoons ground fennel (optional)
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 12 pastured eggs, beaten
• 1/2 c yogurt or sour cream
• 1 med zucchini, grated
• 1 bunch of green onions, chopped
• 1 bunch of basil, chopped
• 2 red peppers, diced (optional)
• 1 t salt
• 1/2 t pepper
• 1 c cheddar cheese

Method:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 12 muffin cups.
Saute the ground pork or sausage on medium heat, add the turmeric, fennel, salt and pepper. When nearly cooked add the peppers, zucchini, green onions and basil. Saute briefly.

In a large bowl beat the eggs and yogurt. Add the sauteed meat, vegetables and spices. Spoon about 1/4 c of the mixture into the muffin cups, top with cheese and cook from 15 to 20 minutes, until the egg has set.

Ever since my menarche I regularly get a powerful craving for raw beef about once a month. When I was younger I didn’t waste time thinking about it and would just head to the fridge, chow down on whatever raw meat I could find in there and end up feeling rather crazy, but satiatied. I kept this to myself for many years, but after coming across Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon Morell everything made more sense, I was simply following a nutritional imperitive dictated by my body.

These days I am careful to be sure to use grass-fed meat for my raw meat dining experiences. When I stumbled upon Ethiopian kitfo I was infatuated. Raw grass-fed beef served with spiced butter from grass-fed cows, mild cottage cheese and collard greens is something I love to crave. The cardamom is one of my favorite spices and adds a very special flavor.

This moist chestnut, pistachio and goji stuffing makes a tasty filling for a juicy goose. The chestnuts just soak up the goose fat and the combination of sausage, pistachios and gojis makes an exotic stuffing with a powerful antioxidant punch. Our local neighborhood Italian grocher Renzullo’s gets in delicious fat Italian chestnuts this time of year and the combination of them with the prize winning blueberry sausage from Gelderman farms is a good blend of local and global flavors for our traditional dinner.

We are fortunate in Vancouver to have a wonderful deli/restaurant in town that has amazing pastured geese available locally (Ethical Kitchen). We decided to have one for our holiday season this year and were very pleased with the results. I like geese as they are all brown meat (which is my favorite). Like ducks they have lots of fat which means that my colorful chestnut and pistachio stuffing goes really well with goose. Chestnuts can get a little dry without plenty of fat. Try this rich old fashioned pomegranate and cherry reduction for a delicious gluten-free sauce.

• 1 medium pastured goose
• 2 – 3 c kombucha
• 2 cans (660mL) coconut water (optional)
• 2 T pomegranate syrup
• 1 orange zest
• 7 whole cloves
• 1/2 piece cinnamon

This amazing, deep, rich sauce takes a while to make but is well worth the wait.Coconut water, pomegranate juice, stock and red wine are reduced to about a third of original volume. Cream and dried cherries are added and the sauce is reduced further. This is a delicious sauce for goose, turkey or chicken and is a great substitute for gravy for guests who are gluten-intollerant or are on grain-free or paleo diets.

It was my brother’s birthday on June 2nd or 3rd (I always forget), which coincided perfectly with the curing of my pig cheek.  To celebrate his 26th birthday I decided to make an EPIC pork-filled breakfast and it was EPIC indeed.

The Roman bacon was ready. It had been ready for a couple of weeks but it was trapped in my storage closet. (See Part 1: Roman Bacon for recipe and details on making this tasty treat)

I have lived in my apartment building for seven years. I have had a key to my storage closet kicking around solo for seven years. I have never lost it, or misplaced it, ever. When do I lose it? Yeah, that’s right when I have a pig cheek hanging from the ceiling.

The real offal experiment continues… with a sheep tongue.

My attempt with the brain was fascinating but not incredibly tasty.  Will the tongue taste better? If looks are any indication then the answer is a resounding no! Good god a tongue is an ugly piece of meat. None of the silkiness of a prime cut. No. It’s all ugly. It’s also a process.

To start a tongue needs to be brined – this is a familiar first step with organ meat. I used a combination of sugar, salt and spices. At that point, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my tongue or I would have put a mexican spin on my spice mixture. Instead I threw in a couple bay leaves, some black peppercorns, and some coriander. To keep the tongue submerged I put a pretty blue cup on it. And there is sat stewing for a few days.

Oh man this dish is so delicious too bad my image doesn’t really do it justice! I can’t wait until we have fresh local blueberries and cherries again. The salad is delicious on its own as well. For the tarragon mustard use my probiotic-rich Date-Mustard recipe and just add tarragon to it.

For my first recipe out of Odd Bits, I decided to bust it open, literally.

The author, Jennifer Mclagan, mentioned that a sheep’s head was quite fiercesome looking.  When my butcher brought it out from the back, held right about head level, I’ll admit that it looked quite hideous. The eyeballs bulged from the naked flesh, teeth bared, tongue limp having fallen through the bottom of the jaw. He wrapped it up gently so the eyeballs didn’t break – a sheep’s head with a broken eyeball could be even more gruesome if it were possible – threw in a couple pig’s feet and off I walked home.