It looks like YOU'LL like it

I am home from work today sick and tomorrow is Adam's surgery, then Monday is a day off work to observe Martin Luther King day. Woohoo! I love long weekends...unfortunately I am not feeling great to enjoy it to the fullest but oh well. I am not terribly sick, just some sinus congestion and runny nose but it was impossible to sleep last night. I finally fell asleep sometime after 4:30 after Adam got me some Benadryl to knock me out. Then I woke up at 9 unable to fall back asleep. I was so uncomfortable propped up but it was the only way my head felt like it wouldn't explode. I hope a nap is in my future today. I do know we will be eating out tonight to celebrate Adam's b-day so I have to be up for that.

Well, today I have more food to share with you. Adam came home from a robotics meeting (he's an honorary member of the high school robotics team) and I was just pulling my dinner out of the toaster oven. I call it pepper nachos. I don't like tortilla chips so I used chunks of red bell pepper in their place. It also has cilantro, tomatoes, corn, black beans, cheese and avacados. I asked Adam what he thought. He looked and smelled it. He said, "Looks like YOU'LL like it. What's for dinner for me?" We've talked about how our kids won't be food picky. we're certain of this...yet we're both picky and in completely different ways so I don't think there's any hope. I already end up cooking two meals most nights...but there is an occassional meal we can agree on, like those stuffed mushrooms.

Pepper nachos

Homemade bean and grain burgers. Adam will actually eat these too, surprisingly. I put yellow mustard, yogurt cheese (the drained yogurt I make) and lacto-fermented ketchup on the bun and sprinkled that with flax meal and added lettuce, tomato and pickles. Yum!!

This was lunch a couple times this week. A baked sweet potato with butter and pepper and a bunch of frozen veggies with a TBSP or so of garden herb cream cheese. I forgot how good that cream cheese, I hadn't bought it in years.

And since I had time at home to make something different than my usual 2 scrambled eggs, I made stuffed french toast. The filling is yogurt cheese (for those probiotics) mixed with cooked down blueberries. And the rest of the blueberries put on top. Then I sprinkled the whole thing with flax meal. It needs more blueberries next time but it was good. Also, I forgot the cinnamon which I really like.

Kishk from Nourishing Traditions

Here's another recipe from "Nourishing Traditions". I LOVE that book. It is a cookbook but it's so much more. Dr. Weston A. Price was a dentist in the early 1900's. He noticed that people from different cultures had better teeth and were more healthy than people of other cultures. He had a theory that diet had a lot to do with that and began traveling the world, researching people's diets, mostly concentrating on people who were still eating their primitive diets. He studied not only what they ate but how they prepared foods. The healthiest groups of people had certain things in common in their diet. I don't know the list off the top of my head but those similarities included fermented veggies/fruits, soaking grains and beans to release phytic acid (some even ferment them as well), they included animal fat in their diet, and whatever I'm forgetting. I first learned about this guy when I was on the raw diet. There is a whole book that comprises his findings, and this book is like the how to of his findings. The first pages give a brief overview and each chapter has information on that particular subject. And on the side of each page has more information. It's the kind of book I could sit down and read...and often do. It's my night time reading. It's a great book but can be very overwhelming when I think about all I'm supposed to be doing.

Like any change, it's best to take baby steps. So my first step was to do some lacto-fermenting. I've made several batches of sauerkraut and a couple of dilly carrots. I've not mastered it in any way, shape or form but I have started. So, now that I am comfortable with fermenting, I can add to it. I have chosen to add soaking grains. For some reason, it's the most intimidating of all. I'm not really sure why. So, my first attempt at soaking is actually one that also ferments. Kishk comes from the Middle East. And it's a super simple recipe...a good one to start with.

4 cups bulgur
4 cups plain yogurt
(I cut it in half in case I really didn't like it)

Mix them together in a bowl and put in a dark place to ferment for 24 hours, covered. Make sure there's extra room in the bowl because it will expand to about twice the original volume.



Spread the mixture on cookie sheets and put in the oven which should be set to the lowest setting. I would dry it that way for an hour or two then just leave them in the oven for several hours to continue drying. The recipe says 12 hours but I didn't need nearly that long.



You can store it on the shelf in an airtight container after it dries but if you plan on having it around for months, it might be better off in the fridge/freezer. For me, I plan on replacing my bran flakes with it so one batch won't be around long enough to have to worry about the fridge.



I tasted it for the first time yesterday. It has a subtle sour flavor to it when eaten alone but when mixed with fruit and milk, you don't really notice it. It does not get soggy at all! It takes a lot more chewing to get through this bowl than it does to get through a bowl of bran flakes...which is probably a good thing anyway since I tend to inhale breakfast.

Next batch (which will be very soon), I will try it before I dehydrate it. If I like that better, than I'll forego the dying step. I can keep a container of it in the fridge to slow down the fermenting process so the flavor doesn't get too sour.

Something new

I haven't been updating the blog lately because it feels like I haven't done anything interesting. But, I recently tried something I've been wanting to do for a while. I found a recipe for sprouted bread online. The only ingredient is sprouted wheat berries. I've bought the Ezekiel bread before which is sprouted grains and nothing else. It tastes slightly different than regular bread but much better for you since it doesn't have any chemicals in it. But a loaf of that bread is $5-6. Since I'm always looking for ways to do things for cheaper, I decided to take on the challenge.

I do have a seed sprouter but it's not nearly big enough for grains so I came up with this:

It's my mixing bowl, a spatter screen and a plastic cookie sheet lid to catch any dripping water. You have to soak the berries overnight then drain. Rinse and drain them 3 times a day for 3 days. Then they're ready for making bread.

I loaded them in the food processor and processed them. I noticed that I didn't particularly like the scent the crushed berries gave off. Then I dumped them into the smallest loaf pan I have. It just barely fit inside the crock pot. The recipe said to cook it in the crock pot for 8 hours. So I put them in just before going to bed.

I was so excited to have a slice with my breakfast the following morning. I opened up the crock pot and the smell hit me. Not a good smell. It was very soggy, not like bread at all. I took a tiny bite. It was disgusting! I'm sad about that. I want to give sprouted bread another chance but next time I think I'll go with a more traditional risen bread with flour made from dehydrated sprouted wheat.

Official torture the dogs night...and an experiment gone wrong

We have our stove plugged in finally! Adam plugged it in last week when we were cooking for 10 people. It's very nice to have back. I've made really good use of it so far. Tonight I canned some pasta sauce, then when I was making the enchiladas, I had a couple skillets going for different things. Plus, I've baked my breakfast granola, the enchiladas, and my sour dough breads.

Tonight was torture the dogs night here at our house. I tortured Bear and Jasmine by giving them their summer shaves. I tortured Jack by pulling off a really big tick that somehow I had missed the last few days (I did actually feel bad about his sentence for the evening) and Tucker's special brand of torture was that he was locked outside (within eye shot of me) while each of the other dogs got to be inside with me while I tortured them. Poor dogs....rough life!

Now, about the experiment... I don't know how I came across the recipe but when I saw it, it struck me as something I would have to try. I love making things from scratch. I usually find the flavor to be better of their store bought counterparts. So the recipe I found was for nixtamal. It's the stuff they use to make masa harina which is used to make corn tortillas. It comes in dried form. But this is fresh stuff so it's still wet. Sounded easy enough. First, you boil dried field or dent corn (not sweet corn) in pickling lime water. Then you let it sit there for two weeks in a sealed container. I resisted the urge to see if it was growing all sorts of disgusting things because I didn't want to let any germs in. Finally, two weeks passed and I was eager to give it a try.

It wasn't as scary looking as this picture makes it look. It was white corn (no pink tints). The coloring came from the reflection off the container. No mold, no bugs, no scary looking things.

Next step is to grind them in the food processor, a cup at a time. It warned about adding too much water or else it would be sticky and wouldn't form into a ball. I added only 2 Tbsp of water to the whole thing and it wouldn't form into a ball so I ended up adding some corn meal in to make it drier and more ballable...if that's a word. But to no avail. As a last resort, I plopped it all on the griddle and spread it out as thin as I could. I was hoping for some sort of a sheet of corn tortilla. I was going to make enchilada pie instead of enchiladas.

My lovely sheet of weirdness. It wasn't cooking through so I put it on a cookie sheet and slid it into the oven. The outside got hard and crunchy while the inside was a toffee like texture that stuck to our teeth. Very strange. I will try making tortilla soup with it to see if it makes it edible. Though it didn't work out, it was actually pretty tasty stuff. I ended up having to go buy corn tortillas to finish up the enchiladas. They didn't taste as good as mine though. I will figure it out though...and they will be good. I love a good challenge.

A mess of food

Squash, Turnip Greens and White Bean Stew

(Pork chop shown is the recipe below)

I love turnip greens so when I saw this, it sounded really good to me...and it was really good. Very healthy and satisfying.

(I used frozen turnip greens with diced turnips and canned cannellini beans so it was fast and easy. I felt there was too much red pepper and cumin since I don't like things too spicy. I only used about half of each and it was still too spicy for my tastes so next time it will only have 1/4 of what it calls for.)

1 lb dried cannellini beans (soaked in 6 cups water overnight)
8 cups water
1/4 cup olive oil
1 head garlic, peeled
1 bay leaf
1 medium onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons dried sage
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
3 lbs butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cubed
4 (10 ounce) cans chicken stock
1 lb turnip greens, torn into pieces (well rinsed)
salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Drain the soaked beans.

2. In a large saucepan, combine the beans, 8 cups water, 2 tbsps olive oil, the head of garlic and bay leaf.

3. Bring to boil and simmer, covered for 2 hours,or until the beans are tender.

4. Drain and discard bay leaf.

5. In the same saucepan heat remaining 2 tbsps olive oil.

6. Add onion and cook until tender.

7. Add sliced garlic, sage, cumin, and red pepper. Cook for 1 minute.

8. Add the squash, chicken broth, turnip greens and drained beans.

9. Bring to boiling, reduce heat and simmer, covered for 20 mins or until squash is tender.

10. Season with salt and pepper.

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Parmesan Sage Pork Chops

Pork chops were on sale at a good price, hence the second pork chop recipe in a short period of time. This one turned out well too, nice and moist, not greasy.

1 1/2 cups breadcrumbs (I use Progresso garlic and herb)
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon dried rubbed sage
1 lemon, rind of, teaspoon grated
2 large eggs, whisked
1/4 cup flour, seasoned with
salt and pepper
4 pork chops, about 1 inch thick (can use bone in or out ones)
1/8-1/4 cup butter
2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions:

1. preheat oven to 425F degrees.

2. Mix in bowl, bread crumbs, grated parmesan cheese, dried rubbed sage and grated lemon peel.

3. Then, on a plate put flour seasoned with salt and pepper; coat chops with flour.

4. Dip in egg.

5. Then dip in bread crumb mixture.

6. Melt butter and olive oil in a oven-proof skillet.

7. Brown chops until golden.

8. Transfer to oven and bake until meat thermometer says 150 degrees, about 20 minutes.

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Fall Harvest Packets

Not really a recipe, just threw some stuff together and I liked it. I used hot sausage and it was a good contrast to the sweetness of everything else. It's not overly sweet though.

1 lb breakfast sausage

1/2 butternut squash, peeled and cubed

2-3 medium sweet potatoes, cubed

2-3 apples (sweet ones), cubed

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/4 orange juice

salt

pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Mix the squash, potatoes and apples in a large bowl.

3. Mix maple syrup, orange juice, salt and pepper in a smaller bowl. Pour mixture over the squash mixture and toss to coat.

4. Tear off 4 sheets of foil.

5. Place 1/4 of the mixture in each foil packet.

6. Break up the sausage and put 1/4 on top of each packet.

7. Seal the 4 packets and place on a cookie sheet and slide into the oven (or on a grill).

8. Bake for about an hour or until squash is tender and sausage is done.

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Chocolate Toffee Squares

Pic stolen from recipezaar. They are thicker than mine turned out to be, maybe because I didn't use an electric mixer, just me.

1 cup butter
1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups unsifted all-purpose flour
1 (6 ounce) package semi-sweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Grease a 13x9x2 inch pan.

3. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

4. Add egg yolk, vanilla and salt.

5. Blend well.

6. Beat in flour just until combined.

7. Turn into prepared pan, spreading evenly.

8. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.

9. Remove from oven and immediately sprinkle with chocolate chips.

10. When melted, spread and sprinkle with nuts.

11. Cut into squares while warm.

12. Let cool completely.

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Amaranth, Quinoa & Corn Chowder

I used carrots instead of leeks and I had to increase the cooking time for the grains.

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups finely chopped leeks (white and light green parts)
1 cup finely diced celery (peel celery before dicing if desired)
1/2 cup finely diced red bell pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
1/4 cup amaranth
1/2 cup ivory quinoa, thoroughly rinsed
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
4 cups corn kernels (thawed if using frozen)
1 cup whole milk
2 tablespoons minced flat leaf parsley (optional)

Directions:

1. In a large, heavy pot, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium-high heat. Stir in the leeks, celery, red bell pepper, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetable are soft, about 5 minutes.

2. Stir in the amaranth and 3 cups of water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Stir in the quinoa and thyme. Return to a boil. Reduce the heat slightly and cook at a gentle boil, partially covered, for 10 minutes. (I had to increase the cook time by 10-15 minutes and the grains were a still a little uncooked in the centers but almost done.)

3.Meanwhile, in a blender or food processor, puree 3 cups of the corn kernels with 1 cup of water. When the quinoa has cooked for 10 minutes, stir the corn puree and the remaining corn kernels into the soup. Add salt to taste. Reduce the heat and simmer until the quinoa and amaranth are tender, 3 to 5 more minutes. When the quinoa is done, there will be no starchy white dot in the center of each grain, and some of the germs' "tails" may unfurl and float freely. On close inspection, the amaranth will look like tiney opaque bubble floating on the surface.

4. Stir in the milk and remaining tablespoon of butter. Add more salt, if needed. Divide into portions and garnish each with a little parsley.

5. Note: The soup thickens on standing; thin as needed with additional milk, and add salt to taste.

Millet Loaf

This is my next dish with the grains I bought. I loved it. I tried it with a bean sauce which was good but after a little bit, I decided the flavors didn't mesh too well. The next time I ate it, I tried it with ketchup, like I would with a meatloaf but that wasn't real great. This time, I actually tried it with gravy, like the recipe suggested and it was definitely the best so I will be sticking with that.

Millet has a nutty kind of flavor.

Millet Loaf

1 1/2 cups millet
3 3/4 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
1 1/2 cups carrot, finely diced
1 cup celery, finely diced
1 cup onion finely diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 1/2 teaspoons dill weed
1 teaspoondried thyme
1 curoasted sunflower seeds (optional)
3 tablespoons whole wheat flour

Directions
1. Rinse millet and put it in a medium saucepan with the water and 1/2 tsp salt. Cook, lid ajar slightly, over medium heat for about 20 minutes, or until soft; the millet should absorb all the water.
2. Saute the carrots, celery, onions and garlic in sesame oil until onions are translucent. Add the seasonings.
3. Mix the cooked millet and the veggies together, along with the sunflower seeds, if you wish.
4. Add 3 tbsp flour to the millet mixture, blending well.
5. Lightly oil (and flour, optional) 2 loaf pans. Press the millet mixture into the pan, and bake at 400 F for one hour (45 minutes if the millet is still warm when you put it into the pan).
6. Allow the loaf to cool for about 10 minutes before turning it out onto a platter and slicing.
7. Serve with mashed potatoes, green beans and lots of brown gravy.

grainy

I found a store here that sells organic locally grown/made items, mostly food. They have a whole row of bulk food. I browsed it for way too long. I didn't want to go overboard so I only shose one kind of grain. I bought the amaranth because the sign said it was "The grain of the Andes". :o) They're tiny balls that become translucent when cooked. They looked like little bubbles in my soup. I am really liking earthy flavors lately so I thought this soup was really good. I didn't use leeks though.

So after the first grain experiment went well, I went back and got a bunch of different kinds of grains that I'll be trying over the next few weeks.



Creamy Cannellini Bean-Amaranth Soup With Basil

2 large leeks, sliced, white parts only
2 tablespoons extra vigin olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup amaranth
2 cups vegetable stock or chicken stock
1 bay leaf
1 cup tomato puree
1 (15 ounce) can cannellini beans or white beans, drained, divided
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly cracked black pepper

Cut the root end from the leeks and slice them in half vertically, then rinse throughly to remove all grit. Slice the leeks ands saute the olive oil over medium heat in a 2 quart saucepan. When the leeks are golden and soft add the garlic and cook for a minute, then add the amaranth, stock, bay leaf, and tomato puree, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover and cook for 30 minutes.

Put half of the beans into a food processor bowl. Puree until smooth. When the amaranth mixture is done, remove the ba leaf, then carefully pour the mixture into the processor and puree. Cover the top of the feed tube with a folded towel as you process, to keep hot liquid from flying out. Pour the puree back into the pan.

Sire the remaining beans and the chopped herbs into the hot soup, and warm gently on the stove for 5 minutes or so. If desired, thin with water or more stock. Season with the salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot with whole grain bread.

Lentils & rice

I posted a question on the help desk. No one answered my question but someone else posted about the same problem I was having. They got an answer. The reason I was having trouble was because I was using the edit Html button. So I can post pictures again.

This recipe ceoms from a book about grains & dried beans. It's simple to make and I love the earthy flavor of it. The recipe didn't call for enough water so I listed what I ended up using by the time it was done cooking.

Rice with Lentils, Esau-Style

1 cup lentils
1 cup unprocessed long-grain white rice
2 tsp. salt
1 large onion, sliced
2 tbsp. oil

Boil the lentils in 3 cups water with 1 tsp of the salt for 15 - 20 minutes, or until tender. In another pan, bring 2 cups of water to a boil, and add the rice and the remaining salt. Turn off the heat, and let the rice sit until the lentils are ready.

Rinse and drain the lentils and rice. Bring 2 cups of water to a boil. Stir in the partly cooked lentils and rice, cover the pan, and simmer the mixture slowly for about 20 minutes, or until the rice is tender.

Saute the onion in the oil until they soften and turn golden - five to seven minutes. Add the onion and oil to the cooked mixture, and serve.