Slickepott’s Featured Foodie – Sarah Naylor: Stir It Up!

Last September was the first time I had ever been to the stunningly gorgeous state of Colorado. I was there as part of work team composed of home school graduates, tasked with improving the campus of a missionary society. Aside from enjoying the beautiful scenery, good hard work, and perfect weather; I got to meet some very fun and interesting people. One such person was Sarah Naylor. She and three of her many siblings were there together, leading the rest of us in various tasks and adventures. When I discovered that Sarah was an accomplished cook, I knew I had to introduce her to all of you. The recipe (actually three recipes) she submitted for this month looks long, but is actually very easy and, of course, delicious. I hope you enjoy making it as much as I did!
...and don't forget to visit Sarah's blog: Stir It Up!

Give us a little background on your life.
I was born and raised in Oklahoma, the fourth child in a family of 4 girls and 5 boys. We moved out to the country when I was nine years old and learned all about milking goats and cows, making butter and cheese, butchering our own meat, training horses, raising baby animals and growing produce. It was a fabulous childhood and out of it sprung my deep rooted appreciation for fresh, local, REAL foods.
Ten years later a new phase in life began as we started a family band. We sold all the animals so we could travel and play music. The next decade was interspersed with concerts and long days on the road, new friends, amazing places, lots of practice and majorly fun times.
I've been blessed with so many opportunities in my life. Looking back I see that many of my dreams were realized along the way – raising and training my own horse, buying and refurbishing a sailboat, traveling in Europe and many of the States, and spending a lot of time hiking in Colorado – just to name a few.
As far back as I can remember, I've loved creating recipes and playing around in the kitchen. My Grandma is a fabulous cook and I wanted to cook just like her. After I graduated from home school high school, I took over the cooking and food related responsibilities from Mom. It was my ideal job – and still is. I've done some catering a lot the way, but my passion is cooking food that family and friends love. It's just plain fun.

What is the purpose behind your blog, ‘Stir It Up’?
My hope is that Stir It Up! will inspire people to think outside the box with their food choices, be creative and inventive in the kitchen, and integrate fresh and wholesome ingredients into their recipes. Many people are afraid to change recipes or even work without one, but cooking can be spontaneous and fun. My desire is to demonstrate that and encourage adventures in the kitchen. I like to portray cooking as an art. If you know the basics, you can develop your own style and do a bit of "coloring outside the lines" to get the flavor you want.

When, where, why and how did you get the idea?
I get a lot of questions regarding food and how I "do it" – from grocery shopping and menu planning to putting the finished entree on the table. Initially, I planned on doing a website, but I'm not very internet savvy and don't like spending a lot of time on the computer. So, while the website idea died out, the blog came to life after a two week backpacking trip through Europe. European food, with its fresh ingredients and phenomenal flavors, totally inspired me. I use the camera we bought in Switzerland to photograph my food and share my recipes with the world, or so I like to imagine.

You come from a large family: does that have an effect on how you evaluate or create recipes? If so, how?
With 8 siblings, 6 of which are still at home, I have a tendency to automatically design a recipe with astronomical measurements in mind. Ten cups of flour in a recipe isn't that unusual around here, but I try to scale down the recipes I blog about. I mean, I realize not everyone wants to make 20 dozen English muffins at one time.
Doing most of my cooking and baking for 10 people has been a huge blessing. Hosting 20 or 30 guests is easy when all I have to do is double or triple what I usually make.

Everybody handles this differently: what is your approach when a recipe calls for unusual or hard-to-find ingredients?
If I can't find the specific ingredient locally, then I either omit it from the recipe or substitute it for something I have on hand. We live about 20 minutes from the store, so I substitute a lot. I like the challenge and sometimes it yields fabulous results that otherwise would remain undiscovered!

What aspect of your work do you find the most challenging?
Cleaning up, definitely.
No, seriously, I'd say creating healthy foods that everyone loves is my biggest challenge and the one I'm most passionate about. I often hear the question, "Why is the food that tastes so good bad for you, and the awful tasting food good for you?" I want to completely switch that around. If we feed our taste buds real foods that are prepared in amazing ways, hopefully the processed "fake" foods will lose their appeal.

What aspect is most rewarding?
It is so rewarding to replicate a recipe that I've tasted in a restaurant, or one that someone else has tasted and described to me, and have it turn out to my liking. I'm a perfectionist when it comes to food, so that can be difficult sometimes. I don't like making the same recipe twice though, so I'm absolutely thrilled when it's perfect the first time.

You have an interesting feature on your blog, The Penarious Challenge; what is that?
First let me explain that crazy term you just saw. Penarious is a word I saved from extinction from www.savethewords.org and, in short, means "food related". It was too good to let go, don't you think? So, the Penarious Challenge is an opportunity for my readers to send me odd, hard-to-find, time intensive recipes, recipes that they would like changed to fit their tastes, or a recipe just to challenge me and I will make or create the recipe and blog about the journey. It has been challenging for sure! I'm loving it!

Do you have any big projects or additions planned for your website?
Nothing really big in mind right now. I made a few changes the first of this year and like the results. There are some improvements to be made and I would like to get my readers more involved somehow. I've had a few ideas, but have yet to come upon the perfect one.

Finally, just for fun, if you were stranded on a desert island with only one food, what would it be?
Oh, this is a tough one! I'd have a hard time choosing between coconuts and avocados. Yeah, I love cheese and dark chocolate, but avocados, well...they're just phenomenal. I could eat them every day.

Featured Foodie: The Experimental Gourmand

As a dedicated mountain dweller, I am thankful that my idea of “traffic” is the bustling Main Street of the rural c