Category: Food

There’s a good reason some of us “wish we were baking.” It’s because some of us shouldn’t be trusted in the kitchen to COOK!!!

You know you have just a few too many grains in the house when you go to make a lovely mushroom barley soup on a foggy autumn evening, and you realize that you’re… just not sure which one the barley IS. You peer at it. You call your SO into the room to peer at it. Your SO peers at it, nibbles at a piece, frowns and mumbles and confirms for you which one is which, then leaves to go back to her hours of staring glassily into the television screen, watching bad Doris Day films while waiting for the bread to bake.

You STILL somehow manage to mislabel the grain.

However, you find out that mushroom RYE soup is downright tasty, too. It’s a quick and easy soup that goes really well with… um… well, bread. Whole wheat rolls, in fact. Or foccacia bread, topped with savories. (Sorry, I haven’t yet figured out what doesn’t go with bread.) Anyway, rye in soup is great, because, unlike barley, it doesn’t suck up all the liquid in the universe. The soup isn’t as velvety, but that’s just fine too.

To begin with, soak 2 c. dried mushrooms in 1 c. hot water for 20 minutes. (Save the water! It adds great flavor!) Porcini, chanterelle, or shiitake all work equally well for this, use your preference, and use a lot.

Into a heavy-bottomed saucepan, place:

• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• 1/2 to one whole chopped white onion, (Or add two. Live a little!)
• Add 1/3 clove of crushed garlic,
• A sprig of rosemary, fresh (And ‘sprig’ is a size measurement of your preference, too!)
• 3/4 c. of rye berries… or, if you must, barley.
• 1/2 c. of white wine
• 2 c. vegetable stock

After your mushrooms have softened, rough chop and add them. Strain the water for particles of whatever, and dump it in as well.

We simmered ours for an hour and a half on low, turning it up to medium for the last ten minutes, and the rye was soft but still chewable. Some people add bay leaf, but I find that bay goes better if I’m going to add potatoes and carrots. A squirt of lime juice brightened the flavor just before serving. This was a simple and light soup; flavorful and filling, and a great new use of rye!

Having a sourdough starter in the fridge means that you have to feed it. Feeding starter takes a cup of flour and a cup of water everytime you use it. We are going through an awful lot of flour. Not that it’s a big deal — flour is fairly inexpensive, after all, but we currently seeking sources that are closer to home. After participating quietly in the locavore challenge introduced to us by Tea, we found a personal commitment to eat locally first, and organically second, to support sustainable agriculture. To that end, we’re looking for Northern California items. Those who participated in the locavore movement found local salt, quinoa and amaranth flour, and flour — from Full Belly Farm. So, there are options out there.

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Just a quick post, to give you an idea of the current project. This one’s the one I blogged about a while ago, and the one which is consuming most of my time … at least, when I’m knitting.

1. s1, k1, *k*, k2
2. s1, k1, *k2tog*, k2
3. s1, k1, *k into front and back of each stitch*, k2
4. s1, k1, *p*, k2

So, the stitch (again) is to K | K2TOG | KTF&B | P across whole rows (see the previous post to get a nicer description). It ends up looking quite pretty, but it’d help if I could actually remember where I was in the pattern (note the several rows of plain old K | P in towards the top – I was in a meeting & kind of paying attention to people talking, instead of keeping track of where I was). I figure I’ve just got to remember to do this again, every 5 repeats or so … yeah right! It’s just going to end up being random, I guess.

We have given in to the temptation to bake … and eat … and are in the process of experimenting with sourdough combined with fiber. We’re trying to hide as much fiber in sourdough as possible, while disguising it as “regular” sourdough. So far, oat bran seems to be the winner. It’s quite light in color, so it hides in there very well, and we’ll know about the texture tomorrow when we try it out on a friend of ours.

Of course, we found the “plain” bread a bit difficult, as we’re used to adding more along the lines of the following (which is my “basic” recipe, in descending order of quantity):

• Whole Wheat Flour
• Water
• Unbleached Flour
• Flax Seeds
• Oat Bran
• Molasses
• Honey
• Wheat Germ
• Quinoa Flour
• Yeast
• Salt

However, it’s much more fun to play with this stuff, that’s for sure. There’s not a chance in the world that you can do “bread art” with anything which is nearly 1/3 fiber … so, this is a nice change, and if it means we can add another bread to our repertoire … it’s only a good thing. Except, of course, that we’ve made four small loaves in the past two days, and all we’ve left is one small one … and that’s to share. Sigh. It’s vacation, right?

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When I was in college in the good old undergrad days, the lady I worked for had a garage full of what I’ll just call Slim(e)fast. Costco had just morphed out of Price Club (remember that?) and people were reveling in that bulk buying thing, so there were just acres of cans in this woman’s garage. It was scary. Miles of dusty, metallic cans housing miles of metallic tasting, dubiously supportive diet drinks. I remember thinking a.) that the drink obviously wasn’t working (you had to see this lady – she drank it with food, okay?) and b.) that the cans took up so much space that I would NEVER do something so dumb. Besides, I thought, we live in California. There’s so much fresh stuff. Can’t she just eat salad and lose weight?

Okay. Flash forward to my post-collegiate life. I’ve kept my vow. I’ve never done that particular dumb thing, but I do have my soy protein shakes, in powder form, and they’re so convenient for when I’m working… and they’ve allowed me to drop a bit of weight in the bargain, so that’s nice, but they, too, I buy in bulk, and they take up a stupid amount of space in our pre-remodel, postage-sized kitchen (which will STILL be postage-sized post-remodel, but that’s another long and ranting post). The thing is, I’m struggling with the idea of convenience in packaged foods as a weight loss support. We do live in California. We do have all this great local produce, farmer’s markets, CSA’s, our own garden. It seems pointless and counter-green to rely on packaged products, when I could “just eat salad.” Oh, the hubris of seventeen.

Shall I get to the point of my rant? D.M. no longer wishes to bake, but IS BAKING. And dear Lord help us, but I could inhale a whole loaf…

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The new trick will be to incorporate fiber into our breads in a … secretive way, so that certain relatives (who should be downright ashamed of themselves) will be able to actually taste things, and then, maybe someday, eat the things baked for them.

Yes, the zucchini bread was vegan; yes, it had flax-seeds in it, and nuts, and oat bran, and wheat germ, and whole wheat flour. But come on, he could’ve actually tasted it! Bah! A nice little lady at work actually STOLE the loaf I brought in for everybody – she just wrapped it up & took it to her desk instead of leaving it in the communal area! Now, would a little taste have hurt him?

Apparently we’re going to have to refine our fiber a bit more, maybe run it through the blender or the cuisinart before we incorporate it into the breads. Maybe get a “white” whole-wheat flour, too, and peel the zucchini, so there’re no little green bits. And oat bran is already light.

And he wonders why his wife’s always going behind him sprinkling BeneFiber in things!

It was the First Bake and everything! Woe!

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SO! The oven showed up this morning at 8:30, and it’s all sparkly, sleek, and wonderfully black and shiny! As an added bonus, of course, we have a grand total of 1 cm clearance between the oven door’s handle and the dishwasher door when it opens … and that’s only by dint of squeezing the oven right up against the refrigerator (yes, bad bad energy consumption, etc. … or didn’t you know that your appliances want room to themselves?).

In order for it to be fully “here,” however, we needed to test it. Problem was, what should we test it with? I mean, yes, it’ll cook (ceramic cooktop), but will it BAKE? So, since we had two monstrous zucchini sitting around, waiting to be fed into the vegetable drier (Okara took precedence yesterday), I figured we’d do zucchini bread. Now, let’s note that when I say monstrous, I mean that there are near-fully-developed seeds inside, which need to be scooped out before you begin.

So, a sore arm and withered fingers later, I ended up with 12 cups of lovely square-cut zucchini bits. I used our Benriner (shown to the right) slicer, because I’ve found that it does less damage to the veggies; it actually slices them, as opposed to grating them, which gives a better overall texture to most things which ask for “grated” ingredients.

This zucchini was added to flax seeds, blended flax seeds (as egg replacer), water, diced almonds, soy milk, pineapple juice, quinoa flour, whole wheat flour, oat bran, xylitol, splenda, raisins, nutmeg, cloves, vanilla extract, fennel seeds, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and … um … oh, yeah. FORGOT TO ADD THE OKARA!

Rats. Those of you who use recipes? This is why you do. This is where you can get all smarmy and say your “I told you so’s” and I’ll agree with you. The problem? I mean, it’s not like I didn’t have a recipe. I have plenty of recipes. I have two PDA’s (one Windows CE, the other Palm), each of which synchronizes with my recipes on the PC. I brought a PDA with me. It was sitting there on the counter. The recipe I was using as a base recipe was right there. You see, though, the problem? Not that I was using it as THE recipe, but as the “base recipe.” It was a recipe for banana bread. Were there bananas involved?

Smells great, though. Off to check … four loaves and a plate of muffins, all at the same time. It’s a trial by fire for it.

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