roots, leaves and legumes - the new sticks and twigs

I remember, when I was a little girl, I used to laugh at TV advertisements for Grape Nuts Cereal. There was this author named Euell Gibbons who most famously said, "Did you know you can eat a pine tree? Most parts are edible." I couldn't find that ad online but here's another classic. Whenever I cook something that is full of really healthy ingredients, I can hear an echo of Euell Gibbons saying, "Its naturally delicious taste reminds me of wild hickory nuts."

That's what I thought about a recipe in the Whitewater Cooks with Friends Cookbook for Quinoa, Chickpea and Roasted Yam Salad. Doesn't that just sound too nutritious to possibly taste good? WRONG! If Euell Gibbons was still alive, I am sure he would be extolling the virtues of this recipe.

AND it is really delicious.

I won't copy a published recipe into my blog, so you'll have to go buy the book. Buy it! This is just one of dozens of scrumptious, and coincidentally healthy, recipes. Much better than a pine tree, and not even vaguely reminiscent of wild hickory nuts.

Gather sticks, twigs and berries. Make something yummy. Remember Euell.

tastes like home

I took a week's vacation with my parents recently. We stayed in a nice hotel, with one of those big breakfast rooms with a hot breakfast provided: pastries, eggs, sausages, make-your-own-waffles... The only thing wrong with it was the porridge. They had those packs of instant oatmeal that you mix with hot milk or water. It looked like porridge but it didn't taste like the porridge I love.

One morning, instead of having breakfast at the hotel, we went out to a fancy brunch place. They had french toast, omelets, eggs benny... Guess what I ordered?

Yup! and guess what my Dad ordered? YUP! They had steel cut oatmeal, cooked properly. It was like heaven to eat this delicious, substantial, and nourishing bowl. I make it at home all the time. At the brunch place, I opted for grilled bananas on top, which was rather fancy and quite delicious. At home, I throw in a handful of dried cranberries and mix them through. My favourite topping is unsweetened coconut, toasted pumpkin seeds and chia seeds. I don't put milk or cream on my oatmeal. If I want to be really decadent, I put a wee bit of real butter right into the middle of the bowl and slowly discover its buttery goodness as I eat. Most days though, it's just the oats and the crunchy, nutty toppings and sweet berries inside.

Here's the recipe:

Steel Cut Oat Porridge

1/2 cup steel cut oats (the real kind, not quick-cooking)
just a little less than 2 cups cold water
slim little pinch of salt
small handful of dried cranberries
unsweetened coconut
toasted pumpkin seeds
chia seeds

Put the oats and the water into a bigger saucepan than you think. This stuff likes to boil over. Throw in the salt. Turn the heat onto high and bring it to a boil with the lid off. Turn the heat down and stir the porridge. When you are really, truly sure that it has settled down, you can put a lid on, just a bit askew because it's less likely to boil over if the steam can escape. Cook it over low heat, so it's just bubbling lightly, for about 20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes. It's done when the oats are mostly tender, and most of the liquid has absorbed into the porridge. Throw in the cranberries and take the pot away from the heat. Plop the lid on tightly and let it sit, off the heat, for 5 minutes. This gives the cranberries time to plump, and somehow counteracts the tendency of the porridge to stick to the bottom of the pot, so it's much easier to scoop the porridge out, and easier to clean the pot after breakfast. Serve the porridge up into a bowl and top it with the coconut, pumpkin seeds, and chia seeds. Pour on cream or milk if you prefer it that way. Do that thing with the butter if you are feeling buttery.

This makes one generous serving, or 2 dainty servings. To make porridge for more people, just scale it up.

Wherever you are, try to find a taste of home. If you are home, take the time to cook real things for yourself. Nothing much good comes out of a small paper package. The real porridge will always be worth the wait.

when I cook just for myself...

I like to cook varied and nutritious meals, and don't like to be in a rut. I feel fortunate that my family eats all kinds of food. There are a few exceptions to this rule of course - foods that I love, but nobody else will eat.

Eggplant and tofu are on the list of "exceptions." I think both of these foods are delicious, and get a bad rap from people who may not even have tasted them before pronouncing them inedible. Luckily, one of my favourite dishes makes use of both tofu and eggplant, and it's super easy to fix. So while my husband and son were both out on Saturday night, I prepared this delicious meal:

Sauteed Eggplant and Tofu with Sweet Chili Sauce

1 pound medium firm tofu - cut into small cubes
1 Japanese eggplant - cut into 1/4 inch slices, then halve the slices to make half-moons
1 Tbs. minced fresh ginger
2 cloves fresh garlic, also minced
vegetable oil
soy sauce
sweet chili sauce

In a non-stick frying pan, saute the tofu with a bit of oil, until it is golden brown and crisp on the outside. Set it aside. Saute the garlic and ginger briefly, in the pan that you used for the tofu, then add the eggplant slices. Cook until the eggplant softens. You may add a few sprinkles of water to make a bit of steam to help the cooking. When the eggplant is cooked (about 5 minutes), add the tofu. Season with a couple of splashes of soy sauce and enough sweet chili sauce to coat everything lightly.

Serve with brown rice, because not everybody prefers brown rice, but maybe you do!

You know the nice thing about cooking something that nobody else wants to eat? You get the leftovers all to yourself!

Remember to cook the things that you enjoy. Cooking for yourself is a good thing.

warm pork salad with apples, cranberries, and apricots

I slow-roasted a pork shoulder the other night. It was very good. There was lots of meat left over, and also potatoes, brussels sprouts, and stewed apples. When almost all of the pork was consumed,  and the other fixings were long gone, I took the last bits of meat, and made a yummy meal-size salad for myself for supper.

Warm Pork Salad with Apples, Cranberries and Apricots

3/4 cup of leftover roasted pork, shredded
1 small apple, peeled, cored, and sliced thinly
small handful of dried cranberries
4 dried apricots, cut into strips
knob of butter
drizzle of maple syrup
squeeze of lemon juice
baby kale
baby romaine
snap peas
cucumber
balsamic vinegar/olive oil/salt & pepper

Melt the butter in a non-stick frying pan and saute the apple slices until they are soft and golden. Stir in the dried apricots and cranberries and the pork. Mix them all together over a medium burner, until they are all warm. Drizzle just a bit of maple syrup over the mixture and mix in. Squeeze a bit of lemon juice over it all, and remove it from the heat. 

Put your lettuce and kale and peas and cucumber into a bowl. Top them with the meat and fruit mixture. Dress lightly with a mixture of balsamic vinegar and olive oil that you have shaken up in a small container. You can set the dressing proportions. I like 3 parts oil, one part vinegar.

Eat it right away. Think about how sometimes the last bit of something (like a pork roast) is truly the best bit, especially when you mix it up into a concoction like this.

lunch, supper, and breakfast (two from the internet, one from my head)

My Great Aunt Grace was a wonderful cook. She made tasty home-cooked meals that were always delightful. I especially remember a warm potato salad that she made, with red potatoes, green beans, slices of ham, and a vinaigrette dressing. It was lovely. Whenever I asked my Aunt Grace for the recipe she would say, "Oh now, I don't have a recipe for that. I made it out of my head." and I would always laugh, because I pictured Aunt Grace using her head as a soup pot, popping open the lid, salting and stirring. It was actually a pretty gruesome picture, but there's no accounting for what makes people laugh.

Like Aunt Grace, I do a lot of cooking "out of my head," but also some from recipes. I like cookbooks, but I also like the internet, which has a never-ending variety of ways to do things. Often I cook with my iPad propped up on the kitchen counter.

Today I have big bowl photos of recent meals cooked from my head and from the internet. I'll give you the links to the recipes, and the ingredient list from my head.

1. Lunch (from my head)
Pommy-Nutty-Feta Salad

This yummy salad was my lunch yesterday. It featured:
spring mix
cucumber
pomegranate
red pepper
walnuts
feta cheese
balsamic and olive oil dressing (not shown, as I dressed the salad after I photographed it, so you could enjoy the beautiful white feta without balsamic spots). I have some Persian style feta which is creamy soft and not as salty as other types. If you get a chance, try some of that. It's good.

2. Supper (from the internet)
Tomato Soup - Jamie Oliver's Version

Here's the link. I love this one because it uses several different vegetables which gives it depth of flavour, and because it's easy and very satisfying. I am a pushover for most tomato soups, and I was really craving some last night. I'm glad I found this version, and I've bookmarked the recipe so I can make it again (and again, and again).

3. Breakfast (from the internet)
Vanilla Scones - Canadian Living Recipes

You'll notice right away when you use this link, that the recipe is for raisin scones. I adapted it to make vanilla scones. I skipped the raisins, and added 2 tsp of vanilla extract to the eggs and milk before combining with the dry ingredients. Instead of rolling and cutting the scones with a cutter, I patted the dough into 2 rounds and cut each into 6 wedges. When the scones had baked and cooled, I glazed them with a mixture of:
icing sugar
vanilla
cream (you could use milk, but I had some cream on hand)

I served some to Andy and Alex, then took some to church for our cafe worship this morning. They were a hit. By the way, I doubled the recipe so I wouldn't have to take all of the scones away after breakfast. That would be mean!

Whether you cook from a book, or from the internet, or from your head, cook something good today.

red green and blue salad

This week in the big bowl: an utterly delicious salad that you can fix up in no time. I could eat this salad every day for a couple of weeks, I think. It's that delicious.

Red Green and Blue Salad

red and green salad greens - this time I used a spring mix with some red and some green leaves
chopped cucumber
snap peas
pea shoots
fresh strawberries - sliced
blue cheese
your favourite dressing - a nice balsamic vinaigrette, or the glory bowl dressing works fine

Assemble the ingredients into single servings or a family-sized salad to share. If someone doesn't like blue cheese, you can serve it on the side. But then, for that person, it will not be red green and blue salad. It will just be red and green. So maybe that person could add some blueberries, or think about liking blue cheese after all.

I realised after I made, photographed, and devoured this salad, that I forgot to add walnuts. They are not red, green or blue, but they are allowed in the salad because they go perfectly with the blue cheese. Oh well, next time.

This is a highly adaptable salad recipe. Whatever you take out or add in, you may adjust the colour description in order to title your salad appropriately.

Enjoy hearty salads with exciting textures and flavours all through the year. The big bowl says this is good, and so it is.

Bonus: Here's the recipe for Glory Bowl, posted online with permission by Canadian Living. See my post below for my own riff on this delicious recipe. The dressing recipe makes a large amount. You can easily halve the proportions to make a manageable size batch. It's good on all of your salads.

the wonderbreads and the granolas

When I was in high school, I dreaded physical education. I dreaded it for many reasons, but mostly because I dislike participating in sports. It is just the opposite of fun for me. Our PE teachers were mostly athletes who assumed that everyone liked sports. Physical education consisted of one week of square dancing plus 39 weeks of assorted miserable awful sports. Most of these were team sports, because what other kinds of sports are there that you can do with 30 fifteen year old girls in an aging gymnasium and a soggy uneven playing field?

To make matters worse, we were allowed to pick our own teams so long as we did so quickly. All of the strong, athletic girls would go to one side of the gym, and the rest of us smart, fat, uncoordinated, artistic, creative, misfit, lovely, kind, interesting girls would go to the other side. Sometimes our teachers let us make up team names, other times they'd just call us "Jody's Team," after the sportiest of the sporty girls, and "The Other Team." I exaggerate here. I suspect they named the team after one of us "other" girls, but I can't remember. I have blocked that out. I do remember that I always called the teams (in my own mind) "The Wonderbreads" and "The Granolas." I was a granola.

Now we are all 52 and 53 years old, and we are all Granolas. Age has a way of doing that. What seemed like insurmountable differences to a 15 year old, exist no longer. Some of us have arthritis. Some of us are very fit. Some of us like sports. Some of us like art. Some of us like both. It really doesn't matter. In high school Phys Ed, it really mattered. The memories stick with me. One example: the vision of a Wonderbread Girl wearing blue shorts and a white t-shirt running hell bent for leather towards me, propelling a soccer ball before her, at a terrifying speed. It was all I could do to jump out of the way and let her score a goal on the poor girl who got elected goal-keeper for our team. At the time I interpreted her advance as a malevolent gesture. Now I think she was just playing soccer. It was a language that I did not understand.

This big bowl recipe is for all of the women who were girls with me in my grade 10 Phys Ed class. Granolas and Wonderbreads unite. Together we are members of one big humanity of people who get up in the morning, eat breakfast, care for families and friends, go to work, watch or play sports - or not. It doesn't matter.

Peanut butter and Almond Granola

5 cups old fashioned rolled oats (not quick cooking, not steel cut)
1 cup whole, unblanched almonds
1/3 cup honey
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 cup dried cranberries

Heat your oven to 350. Melt the peanut butter and honey in a saucepan until they are liquidy. Mix them together with the oats and almonds in a big bowl.

Spread the granola on a large cookie sheet. Bake for about 20 minutes, turning the granola over and moving the stuff in the centre out to the edges every 5 minutes or so, until all of the granola is toasty golden, but not dark brown. Your nose will tell you when it is done.

Add the cranberries to the still warm granola and stir them to distribute them thoroughly. Let the granola cool. Store it in an airtight container.

Enjoy this granola with yogurt and fruit. Enjoy your sports, your arts, your friends and loved ones. We are all Granolas. We are all Wonderbreads.