Garlic / Sage / Wine

I love one-pot meals! They are simple (enough) to make, have little clean up, satisfy the craving for rustic comfort food, and usually make enough for left overs the next day. This recipe discovered my pot when I was trying to make dinner with the odd's & in's found in my fridge. It has so much flavor and is close enough to healthy with a dash of guilty pleasure, so I love making it regularly.

Feeds 4 comfortably. Open a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot to enjoy with this meal.

Ingredients:

1.25 lbs ground turkey
16 oz package of gnocchi
5 cups of chopped kale or spinach
15 oz cooked kidney beans (1 can)
2 cups roughly chopped shitake mushrooms
1 cup Gorgonzola blue cheese
1/2 cup dry white wine
4-6 tablespoons Bragg's Liquid Amino
2 tablespoons diced fresh sage
4 cloves fresh garlic, diced or crushed
Olive oil
Salt & Pepper

Directions:

Cheaters Hint: its quicker if you use two pots, one for boiling the gnocchi and one for cooking the turkey. If you do this, you cut down on time by cooking both at the same time, but it wont hurt your dish if you want to just use one pot.

Cook your gnocchi, (usually it take 3 minutes in boiling water, until they float to the top). Drain and cover in olive oil so they don't clump together. Set aside.

In a large pot (or large thick cask iron skillet) over medium heat add a few tablespoons olive oil, garlic, sage, and the turkey. When the turkey begins to brown I like to season with pepper and add the white wine.  Cook for another minute or two. Add the can of beans, chopped Shitake mushrooms and Bragg's Liquid Amino. When the turkey is no longer pink, add the gnocchi and your greens. Give a good couple of stirs and cover until the greens are cooked too your liking. Garnish with Gorgonzola and salt & pepper to taste.

Don't judge on how it looks, let your taste-buds decide!

Variations:

I like using gnocchi because it adds a comforting texture to the dish and evens out how "meaty" it can be. But, if you want to cut out the carbs, its still totally tasty without it. I love using baby kale or spinach because it cooks quickly and is easy to add allot to the dish. If you don't have any dark leafy greens, chopped broccoli rabe is an excellent variation. I would only add it to the pot sooner so that it has time to thoroughly cook. If your trying to cut your fat and don't add the Gorgonzola as a garnish that is just a shame. You don't know what you are missing.

Chef's Details:

I never skip on flavor when I cook. I always add more garlic, more herbs and more wine than the typical person. These ingredients are so good for you and make the dish complex and increasingly more enjoyable. The wine keeps the lean turkey meat from drying out and adds a heavenly rich evening flavor. I pretty much always cook my veggies with a dash of Bragg's Liquid Aminos. It adds a depth of flavor and nutrients that feel good when you eat it. Shitake mushrooms are rich in antioxidants and are known to be immune boosters. Plus, they do a wonderful job at soaking up the flavors of the dish that may escape from the meat and beans. Talking about beans...I add a can of kidney or garbanzo beans to this dish because that's usually what I have in my pantry, but I'm sure any other bean or lentil would work just as well.

Why I eat Garlic (Allium sativum) everyday:

Garlic is a miracle plant. It's a shame that many people shy away from including it into their diet because of its strong odor. I grew up with my parents cooking with it all the time. My dad would eat raw cloves whenever he felt he might be catching a cold. They would religiously add 4-6 raw crushed garlic cloves as a garnish to our pasta. And they were wise in doing so! It had to be a strong component in why my family and I rarely got sick. Garlic has thought to been used medicinally for some 5,000 years. "It is the most powerful herb for the treatment of antibiotic-resistant disease. No other herb comes close the the multiple system actions of garlic, its antibiotic activity, and its immune-potentating power" (Buhner. 1999. Herbal Antibiotics). Garlic is antibacterial, antiviral, antiseptic, antiparastic, antiprotozoan, antiviral, antifungal, anthelmintic, immune-stimulating, hypotensive, diaphoretic, antispasmodic, cholagogue. Moreover, garlic can be grown practically all over the world which makes it affordable and easy to obtain.

Benefits of Sage (Salvia officinalis):

I encourage you not to be afraid to cook with herbs. Though sage can smell potent when fresh, cooked down it mellows out and is a wonderful way to expand your pallet and confidence in the kitchen. Like garlic, sage can be found growing throughout the world. "Though not as strong as other herbs, sage has been used for at least 2 millennia in all cultures where they grow food for persistent bacterial infections within or without the body" (Buhner. 1999. Herbal Antibiotics). Sage is antiseptic, antibacterial, astringent, tonic, expectorant, and diaphoretic.

I hope you make this dish, and I hope you love it as much as everyone I have fed it too.

Whelp, I think it’s been long enough since I last wrote!

Spring will be arriving (eventually…) here in the northwest, and with it I feel the urge to come out of hibernation and to refocus on my writing. Yay. It’s been over a year since I moved to Montana, and longer since I wrote on this blog. Yikes. I have certainly been deep in my writer’s hiatus.  This blog initially started out as a travel blog and then morphed into something less personal when the traveling ceased. Though my travels and adventures abroad have been the highlight of much inspiration, I want to practice writing in the present, and share stories of the muses found in everyday life. So, this blog is once again taking on a new direction, another bend in the road! My writing will reflect on my outdoor adventures amongst the mountains and rivers around me, with my dogs and friends in tow, filled with recipes and pictures of things I love to make, hopefully, all stories you, my little audience will find amusing to read. On that note, here's part of the story of why I am here in Montana.

Last winter when I pack up my life and two dogs, and drove to Montana, I was on a mission to fulfill a dream of mine. Since I can remember, the wild woman in me has dreamt of living in solitude, in a cabin (or above a barn in this case), tucked in the mountains somewhere serene, covered in a snowy winter, all bundled up with my dogs in front of a fireplace. 

 

Thanks to perfect timing and a gracious friend, who coincidentally has "this place" in Montana, I was able to live out this dream of mine. It is in “this place” where I spent a couple months in, I guess, what many would call a retreat.  It was here that my goals were to intentionally give myself the time to read the pile of books I've put aside, purposefully journal, practice my yoga, walk my dogs, horse-back ride, and just learn to sit and be still. I found myself once more day-dreaming and being okay with it. I taught myself to actually make time each day to stop moving from task to task and try to become a little bit more self-aware. Every day was baby steps in the direction I wanted. I wanted to live in an environment where I could push aside the minutia and live simply with intention. For me, this meant I had to somewhat isolated myself in effort to start living how I wanted. Coming from a fast moving, ever busy, competitive and consuming southern California society, I was going against the grain by moving out to a ranch in a Montana winter. Many people didn't understand why I was moving (I didn't have a job waiting for me) or that I would last longer than 2 weeks. I am hoping they are pleasantly surprised to see that I'm still here and happy.

 

Even though this was a personal goal of mine which I finally took the time to fulfill, it didn't make it easy. All the chaos I had in California, I still carried with me into Montana. Feelings of impatience, anxiousness, worrying about my future and lack of career, accompanied by my competitive nature and pressure from family and friends to find success was constantly feeling like an internal battle.  It was my instinct that kept directing me to not focus on those feelings of insecurity, but to be quiet, stop worrying so much and take the time to reflect on why my life wasn't going as I wanted.   In some ways, I was cleaning out my closest of personal baggage, addressing the crap I didn’t want in my life anymore and finally letting it go. 

 

It was really boring and lonely at times. I remember when I first got there, unpacked and settled in, I thought, “okay, I’m ready. I’m alone, safe and comfortable, I have everything I need…so this is a retreat...this sucks." Where was the lightening bolt of self-awareness and insight on what I should do with my life? Why was I still feeling anxious? Oh--because retreats aren't easy. Quieting your mind and learning to be alone is hard. Self-reflection sucks, because you find truths that sometimes hurt. So there's that. In spurts of feeling esoteric, I would open my arms and ask the universe for growth and wisdom and peace. Ah yes, the universe will deliver.  But I forgot to ask the universe to make it less painful, and the meaning in the words growing-pains proved true.

 

I put myself in a place where I could shut out the world for a little while. No Internet, no TV, no easy immediate stimulation to distract me from the present. And, I am so glad I did! I highly recommend it. In all, I was very blessed to have that opportunity and am grateful that I went for it.

Of course, sooner or later retreats have to end. But hopefully you walk back into this crazy chaotic world feeling a little bit more sure-footed and at peace with your journey. Mine ended with spring's arrival and a surprising beginning of something wonderful.

Here's to many more bends in the road, and places where good stories come from.