Grains and Goals

Happy New Year, Friends!

And how are those goals coming?
Ten days down, 355 days to go! 
Are you eating right?
Did you exercise yet today?
How about the closets. . .are they looking re-ordered and re-organized?
Ha.
This is how I spend each and every January of my life recommitting to this simple things, but I wouldn't change it.  Nope. I really do love my January goals and don't worry one bit if I don't keep them for long, usually many of them manage to stick and if not--then I just work on them again next  year, so no worries. 

Here's a link to a little something that's REALLY helped us at our household this week.  It's called Grandma's Grains and I think its fabulous.  Just pour everything into one little pot and there ya go.  I cook em up with my pressure cooker.  We leave out the wild rice since I don't currently have that on the pantry shelves, but they do add some nice color.  Heidi Swanson has gorgous pictures of the food she creates on her blog, plus she is so committed to cooking healthy, delicious food, so do check it out.  The best thing about Grandma's Grains is they STICK.  As in you eat a bowl with yogurt and blueberries in the morning and then suddenly its past lunch time and you haven't even thought about food yet.   This week I've literally tossed them into every single dish in sight--salads, burritos, marinara sauce (yep, I'm sneaky like that).  Here's hoping your very own batch of Grandma's Grains sticks to your ribs and that you stick to your New Years goals.  Happy January!

Slice of Heaven

Heavens I LOVE this pie!  It is insanely good.  It is by far the best recipe I ever got off the foodnetwork web site and it may be the number one thing I look forward to eating at thanksgiving (with apologies to the stuffing. . . stuffing, you know I still love you--but sweet you ain't!)  It came from an old show, like seven years ago, when some unseen narrator traveled around and showcased little bitty restaurants and bakeries in small town America.  It was before the nation went "foodie" and there was even such a thing as "Food Network Stars".

Kara asked for the recipe and I did mean to post to for y'all.  I made this once on a whim 6 years ago and I've made it each and every thanksgiving since.

Cranberry Walnut Tart

Sweet Tart Dough
(quick disclaimer on the sweet tart dough--it is very crumbly and a bit tricky to work with.  If you have another sweet tart dough, you can substitute that.  Don't let this disclaim detour you from making this!  Just press the crumbles into the pan if you must, lovelies).


1 1/2 c powdered sugar
1 1/2 sticks butter, unsalted and softened
1 tsp vanilla, pure
2 1/2 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg


Cream the  sugar, butter and vanilla until smooth and silky in an electric mixer.  Add the flour and salt.  Pulse just until combined.  Add the egg and pulse in a few more bursts into all that yellow egginess is incorporated.  Mold this into a disk shape, wrap it in plastic and stick it in the fridge while you go onto the filling.  Let it rest at least 30 minutes to chill that butter back up.

Filling from Heaven:
5 Tablespoons butter (a little over half a stick)
2 Tablespoons plus one teaspoon flour
1/3 c brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/3 c dark corn syrup
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2/3 c fresh cranberries (1/2 chopped, 1/2 whole)
2/3 c walnuts (most of it chopped, some left whole to look "purdy"--I think in a southern accent when I cook pies, it must be Paula Deen talking in my brain.  Or maybe O'Pee, my dearly departed paternal Grandmother. Go figure!)

Melt the butter and set aside.  Blend the flour, sugar and cinnamon.  Add the remaining ingredients (yes, butter included)and stir until well combined.

Now you can line your pie plate with the dough.  Sometimes it works for me to roll it, other times I'm more or less pressing it in.  .  Sometimes I actually use a tart pan.  Its going to taste amazing no matter what the edges look like.  Pour that filling on in, gently placing some of those whole walnuts and cranberries on top to be pleasing to the eye.  Pop it in the oven to bake for 30-35 minutes.  Your house is going to smell soooooo nice and the cranberries are going to burst their red juiciness into the filling.  The tart will still be a bit wiggily in the middle when you take it out but should firm up after it cools down (you know, like pecan pie does).  The tart will keep for one week in the fridge, but I tell you its going to get gobbled up quick!  Happy Thanksgiving!

The "Spare"itarian

The family and I just finished our one month experiment of “mom cooks no meat” (meat defined here is beef, pork or poultry; we ate plenty of fish and eggs). And it was a great success. Mr. Handsome  claims he didn’t even notice I wasn’t cooking meat, he liked our meals so much. Cooking is creative and fun for me, so the added time in the kitchen wasn’t painful. In the beginning, I relied heavily on Taste is Trump for inspiration and incorporated lots and lots of grains in places where I would typically have used just meat. By the end of the month, I let my imagination run loose and made up some keeper recipes. I'll start with your salad and hopefully before to long I'll post some recipes for a main course. Enjoy!

Spinach, Pomegranate and Goat Cheese Salad with Lime Dressing

Ohhh, the flavors in this dish are soooooo tantalizing on the tongue. Bursts of lime zest zing and zap and that pungent goat cheese melts into a smooth sweetness. I love* this one, especially the goat cheese**. I made it up with whatever ingredients we had on hand, so feel free to improvise:

Spinach
Red grapes, sliced in half
Pomegranate seeds
Avocado cubes
Goat cheese crumbles
Lime zest (no skimping on the lime zest! It makes the salad)

Lime and Coconut oil Salad Dressing

I experimented with coconut oil since many people are touting it as a healthy saturated fat. The jury is still out on that for me but it does have a lovely creaminess to it. Use olive oil if you don’t do coconut. I only made a wee bit of dressing as I knew just my sweetie and I would be trying it. About two tablespoons of each main ingredient worked well for us. Use equal parts of: Coconut oil, lime juice and sweetener (honey, sugar or agave syrup whatever you sweeten things with. We used a bit of sugar and agave.). Add a pinch of salt and pepper.

*If I were a child and said “I love this salad,” and another little kid responded with a sassy “then why don’t you marry it,” I would retort to that with the requisite evil eye and how dare you stare. But internally, deep down in the recesses of my heart, I would know that if I had to stay with one salad for the rest of my life, this one would be a contender.

* * I remember the first time I tried goat cheese. I was 17 and a senior in high school; the foodie movement was just budding and I was on board. I made homemade vanilla ice cream with an actual vanilla bean. Poached pears for my own pear mint sorbet. I was into trying “unusual” ingredients and I especially loved cheeses. The more foreign the better. One afternoon I stumbled upon a package of goats cheese new and unopened in my fridge. What serendipity! Something new to try! The package of cheese in the fridge had a goats head on it done in a black charcoal pencil medium and I thought he looked very strong and proud. I pulled that cheese out and slapped a piece on a cracker, anxious to find out what the goats had to offer. The instant I tasted it I knew: The goats need to go back to the barn yard. Their reputation for eating garbage was resulting in nastiness! How dare they mar my love of cheese with something so rank! That goat’s head picture now looked positively devilish. We parted ways for at least 15 years. But then as an adult I found myself eating in a salad, and not wishing to offend anyone, continued eating the pungent substance until I determined it has a sweet, creamy aftertaste that I began to crave in regular intervals. If you ask me if I liked goats cheese today I will admit that for lunch I just ate a hunk of it in a bowl with a spoon. (Actually, I didn’t do that, but I did think about it and it would have tasted delicious, I’m sure. I did eat some in my salad.) If you don’t like goats cheese, use feta instead.

If You Come Visit Me, I'll Make This For You

You will really be glad. They are so good and healthy too.

Our family recently had an F.H.E. lesson on the Word of Wisdom. We focused on keeping our bodies healthy so that we can be more effective in serving the Lord. So we decided to do a little family experiment of eating vegetarian for one month. As of tomorrow, our family will have gone 2 weeks eating a non-meat diet (but we are eating fish—I know, I know, but we’re taking baby steps to reduce our saturated fats). There had been many factors in all of us--mom, dad and the kids--getting on board with this goal. This book, The China Study, was one of them. I’m hoping to read it soon.

Our goal was all well and good until the day before we were to start when I started thinking, “What in the world am I going to feed my family?!!?” I didn’t want to just up my carbs and dairy, but really hoped to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into our diets.

There's one of our new favorites:

Homemade Falafal, Mexican Style

This has by far been our standout new dinner recipe. We absolutely love it! (It is based off my sister in law’s Falafal Recipe from her fabulous cooking blog. So a huge shout out to Kara and her relentless pursuit of making healthy foods taste great!) I took Kara’s recipe and swapped out the Mediterranean ingredients with their Mexican flavored equivalent. Sensational results! Especially if you love spicy.

3 cups white beans, cooked and drained

1 onion, roughly chopped

½ cup chopped cilantro

1/8 – ¼ c chopped roasted red peppers (the kind from a jar)

2 cloves garlic, pressed

2 eggs

3 tsp cumin

1 -2 tsps chili powder

1 tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp baking powder

1 to 1 ½ cups bread crumbs

olive oil for frying

(That sounds like a lot of ingredients, but these really didn’t seem to hard to me.)

Mash your beans up with a potato masher (blender makes them too pasty). But put the rest of your ingredients (minus the bread crumbs and oil) into the blender and pulse a few times to incorporate them and chop up the onion finer. Then add this blended onion/cilantro mixture to the beans and stir. Next sprinkle in your bread crumbs. Start with a cup and see if you need up to a ½ cup more to get your desired consistency, which is not too sticky and able to hold together in a small patty shape.

I make up these little patties—golf ball sized that I’ve flattened into a chubby little disk--and set them on a paper towel until its their turn for the frying. Heat your oil up in a wide skillet. About 1 inch worth should do. I try to get my oil to 375 degrees (yes, I use a thermometer, but you don’t have to). When the oil is hot enough, then less oil is absorbed into your food. (little tip: I find the best way to flip these patties in the hot oil is with a slotted spoon and scoop them up against the side of the pan to turn over. Tongs were much messier).

We eat these scrumptiously tasty gems in tortillas with spinach, lettuce and some of Kara’s fish taco sauce for extra punch. So divine! Please, if you're going to the trouble of making homemade falafal, you must put some of this special sauce on it. It's hot pizazz will put a serious spark in anything it touches.

Chipotle Yogurt Sauce:
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce (buy it in a small can in the Mexican food section)
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons honey
1 cup yogurt
2 tablespoons mayo
1 teaspoon salt

Place all ingredients in blender on high, blend well. Store in a air tight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. Makes a great salad dressing for Southwestern salads.

Conquering Boredom One Recipe at a Time

An observation:

A girl with a newborn nursing child (which happens to be, yes, number 6 newborn child),

PLUS a LOUSY economy where my husband is constantly pointing out how we need to conserve, conserve, conserve our money (translation: stop with the home improvements/decorating ideas--and I agree with him, he's right, but back to my previously started sentence)

A girl with a newborn PLUS a lousy economy gets BORED.

I can't tell you how bored I am people. I sit on the couch and nurse a lot. As I do so, I try to block out of my mind all the ideas I get for improving the view from my couch (read: my house) as that would involve spending. And so I get bored. And then I feel like I'm a boring person.

No one wants to be a boring person. This is the ultimate dig, to be dull and lifeless. How is my husband supposed to stay in love with me if I am boring? I need to stay a little interesting and exciting to keep my family alive and strong!

And so as an antidote to this, I've been throwing more effort into my culinary conquests in the kitchen. (You'll have to ask Mr. Handsome if he thinks it is working on keeping me interesting).

Last week, I made bread from scratch and it turned out beautifully. It was a proud moment for me. Honestly, I've been bread challenged for years. I make it once and then when I go back to do it again I've forgotten all the secrets and can't even remember which recipe I used, etc. But this time it worked, as I said, beautifully and I will remember I used my SIL's recipe that you can find here. It was 100% whole wheat and still light and fluffy.

I was feeling bored again a few nights ago and thought about putting together a fine Italian meal--because everyone knows Italy is very exciting--all I needed to get from the grocery store was some nice artisan bread and some bruchetta. But that would involve a trip outside with the newborn AND spending money. . .so I made the bread myself. It was actually easy. And once again, it tasted delicious. I opted for Nancy's homemade pesto instead of bruchetta since we had those ingredients. Boy, is it good folks! And genius Nancy makes it with spinach instead of parsely and guess what, it tastes awesome and its good for you! Have I mentioned spinach is a superfood once or every time the word spinach leaves my mouth?
Click here for recipe.

And now you know what you'll want to make for dinner this week! Happy Dining and may we stay at home moms ever be oh so exciting!

Homemade French Bread

Ingredients:

5 cups bread flour

2 T SAF instant yeast

2 1/2 tsp. salt

2 cups warm water
1 egg for egg wash
cornmeal, if you have it.

Directions:

Put your yeast into some warm water. Then, mix 1/2 your flour with your salt in the bread mixer. Pour in your water/yeast mixture and blend on low speed while you add the remaining flour. continue adding a bit more flour until the dough has pulled away from the sides and center post of the bread maker.

Using the dough hook attachment, put your bread mixer on high for 8 minutes to knead the dough. Then turn dough out into oiled bowl and let rise until doubled in size.

Punch the dough down and divide it in half. Roll each half into a large rectangle. Roll up, starting from the long side and taper the ends. You can seal the edges with water.

Grease a baking sheet and sprinkle with the optional cornmeal. Place the loaves seam side down on prepared sheet and slash some cuts on the diagonal with a sharp knife.

Let rise again for 35-40 minutes. "Paint" bread with an egg wash.

Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 20 minutes. Brush with egg again and cook for 15-20 minutes more. Tent with foil if they are starting to get too dark.