After exploring my book on grains last week (see https://marykisner.com/from-the-bookshelf-the-splendid-grain/) I was motivated to give one of the recipes a try. Quinoa Potato Salad looked interesting but I wanted to try to make it gluten-free with pasta.
Here is the original recipe:
At the bottom of the recipe, it mentions a variation to use pasta shells instead of potatoes. I went to the grocery store to see if I could find some gluten-free pasta and of course, some Quinoa. I was able to find this interesting pasta made with chickpeas! Who knew there was such a thing!
The above list of ingredients show the amount of protein, fiber and net carbs in the whole box. Below is the list for an individual serving.
I was also able to pick up some Quinoa, but then I found this package on my shelf and thought I’d better use it first.
This was a good choice to save time…and dishes. All I had to do was open the two tubs of Quinoa and dump them into the bowl. I also needed celery, pickle relish and my vegan mayo.
First, I boiled the pasta. It cooked in only 8 minutes but certainly made a lot of foam!
The pasta kept it shape well…sometimes gluten-free pasta turns mushy.
I added the pasta to the bowl of quinoa and added the celery and a tablespoon of pickle relish.
Then I added my mayo and a little mustard, salt and pepper (I forgot to mention those items!)Salad ready to chill.
Actually, warm the salad tasted OK…chilled will be better. I think it will be a new way to make a nutritious pasta dish. Enjoy!
Inspiration to expand food choices can come from many places. In my case, my nutritionist suggested I eat more whole grains…but less wheat! In my small world that means rice and maybe oatmeal. No problem. However, today I was in the mood for a broader definition of “grains.”
I’d like to share a well-loved book that I’ve had on my shelf for almost 20 years. It has been helpful in reminding me about the other grain choices I have to choose from. This book, The Splendid Grain, by Rebecca Wood (1997), has been inspiring me to explore other grains for years. There does not seem to be a more up-to-date edition but it is still available on Amazon.
The book is not full of beautiful color pictures (although there are a few of various recipes). Most of the pictures of the grains are black and white. Most of the grains are familiar to me by name, but I wouldn’t know what to do with them. This book gives a great overview of each grain, where it is grown and a few recipes using it. The Table of Contents shows how the grains have been arranged by showing where they came from:
Here are just a few of the grains that I found interesting and will work on incorporating into my menus.
Wild Rice
The author has arranged the grains as shown above, beginning here in the Western Hemisphere and following the sun around the globe. Wild rice is the only truly North American wild grain that’s commercially available. More that 80% of the available wild rice is commercially grown, mostly in California. This hybrid variety is selected for responsiveness to fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides as well as for ease of mechanical harvesting. The wild rice grown in the Great Lakes region, on the other hand, has adapted over thousands of years to the specific lake or river and is often hand harvested from small boats. Each variety has its own unique flavor. I think the story of where it comes from encourages me to use it more often.
Quinoa
Quinoa has the highest nutrition profile of all grains and is the quickest to cook. According to the United Nations World Health Organization, Quinoa is closer to the ideal protein balance than any other grain. This alone makes it worth figuring out how to cook it. Steamed like rice it’s a quick addition to any meal. Ground into flour, it can enhance the protein content of your baked goods.
This book also provides an assortment of recipes using each grain. I found this one that looked interesting…Quinoa Potato Salad. I’ll have to give it a try.
Oats
Oats thrive best in a cold climate. They were probably first established in Central Asia and made their way to Europe. They have always been used primarily as livestock food, and in fact about 90% of all oats grown in the U.S. is used for animal feed. Over the years the popularity of oats in breakfast foods has grown. I often add rolled oats to my favorite bread recipe because it gives a nice flavor and reduces the amount of wheat flour in the bread. I found the recipe below using oats that I think I’ll try:
Tef
Another grain that I find interesting is Tef. This tiny cereal grain is grown in the mountains at the source of the Blue Nile. Tef is integral to Ethiopian culture. This tiny grain was almost unknown outside Ethiopia until the 20th century. It is nutritionally superior but is a labor-intensive crop. I have found a source of Tef at https://www.bobsredmill.com/ but I am unfamiliar with the foods and recipes from Ethiopia. I’d like to try it if someone else would cook it properly.
Sources of grains
Many of these grains like wild rice and quinoa are available at our local health food store. With grains like Tef or amaranth I think your best bet is to go online a find a good organic source to experiment with. There is a list of Mail Order Sources at the end of this book, but considering it was published 20 years ago, I suspect they may have changed and there may be others. Try searching again to find new sources.
I found this book to be a good reminder that I can cut back on wheat and still have whole grains in my life. This is a good resource to have on the shelf. Enjoy!
Many of you know that I can’t eat eggs or dairy products. However, I can still eat meat…so I’m a vegan that can eat meat! Go figure! Commercial pizza is out of the question because of the cheese restriction. I’ve tried pizza without cheese and it just doesn’t taste right. So, we basically avoid buying it. I’ve tried making my own pizza, but still…no cheese makes it a boring meal.
If you recall, back in August when we were blessed with an overabundance of lovely tomatoes (see https://marykisner.com/time-to-make-pizza-sauce/), we made a big batch of sauce and labeled it pizza sauce knowing it could be used with many other recipes. I was always hoping I would find a good substitute for the cheese.
We were cruising Trader Joe’s last week and found a bag of vegan shredded mozzarella style cheese…a “cashew cheese alternative.” The description on the back of the bag sounded interesting. Time to give pizza another try!
I really do hate to waste my time making pizza crust from scratch if I won’t be able to eat it. Unfortunately, the prepared pizza crusts found at the grocery store (the brand is Boli…or something like that) say they have “milk” in them…which usually means they’ve seasoned it with Parmesan cheese and Italian seasonings. However, we found these Mediterranean Flat Breads that baked like a thin crust pizza shell! They worked great!
Bert likes cooked meat on his pizza so he cooked hamburger with onions. We opened a can of sliced black olives and a can of sliced mushrooms. Bert used regular cheese and I tried the new stuff. One half-pint jar of our pizza sauce was just enough for both pizzas.
Here’s my pizza ready to go in the oven.
After 15 minutes at 365 degrees, my fake cheese looked sort of melted. However, it tasted GREAT!! I consider this a win! Boy am I glad we made all that sauce. Now it would be worth it to make my own crust…or not! The flat bread came out crunchy and was delicious.
Almost forgot to take a picture before I polished it off!
Now I’ll be excited to take good care of next year’s tomatoes, knowing we’ll put the sauce to good use! I can see t his fake cheese being useful in many dishes where cheese is used as a topping or minor ingredient. I’m not sure I’d like a whole dish of macaroni and this cheese. It tasted good but the mouth-feel was a little different. However, this pizza was a great success. Give it a try! Enjoy!
A few weeks ago Bert found this recipe in a magazine he receives, MuzzleBlasts, that is all about Muzzle-loading rifles and events. The magazine even has a recipe and a monthly quilt block article with instructions for the rest of the family. Of course, we like apple crisp, but I guess the maple flavor and bourbon ingredients sounded interesting. We bought apples and then got busy with other projects. The apples were shifted around on the counter for a few weeks while other activities took our time (like cookies)!
I finally decided it was time to make this recipe before the apples spoiled. You can see from the photo below that trying to follow the recipe with all the background pictures was difficult. I retyped the recipe into the format I prefer and that follows the magazine picture.
The recipe was not too hard to follow. Bert didn’t have any bourbon around so he substituted whisky. The hardest part was cutting up the apples!
I put the apples in cold water to keep them from turning brown until I got them all cut up.
This large casserole dish worked well. It was deep enough that if it bubbled up it wouldn’t spill over the top. Of course, we had a taste before I could even get a picture!
Not bad! Next time I would skip the bourbon or whisky, but the maple syrup added lots of flavor. Pretty quick and easy…except for the time to cup up the apples. Give the recipe a try! Enjoy!
For as long as I’ve known Bert (58 years to be exact!) even before we were married, he has made chocolate chip cookies. He started baking with his Mother using the recipe for Toll House Cookies on the back of the chocolate chips bag. He would usually end the baking with one very large cookie the size of a pizza pan! Over the years, the number of ingredients has expanded along with the actual volume of cookies. At the beginning the cookies were just for family. Now, he mails 10-12 boxes around the country to family and friends that have moved away. Of course, some local friends and family benefit from his obsession with chocolate chip cookies too. I get to benefit with how wonderful the kitchen smells while he’s baking! (With my allergies to eggs and dairy I haven’t tasted them for several years!)
When he first started baking, he mixed everything by hand with a very large wooden spoon. Here it is next to a regular wooden spoon and silverware.
Several years ago, he invested in a large commercial mixer that makes the job much easier.
He mixes up all the dough in one day and stores it in the garage in giant stock pots and bowls.
His recipe is impressive and the ingredient list is no longer being tweaked. This year he was unable to get Soft-as-Silk cake flour, so he got a different brand. He noticed the difference!
Here is the recipe. I think he made 10 batches in one day! Crazy, I know!
I just found his tally from 2014 that figured out the total ingredients in pounds. He said this year he made about 170 pounds of dough, which will make about 120-130 dozen large cookies!
And so the marathon begins:
So, the question is…do I bother making cookies at Christmas? Absolutely not! I may, however, make a batch of oatmeal bread in the big mixer when it’s sitting right here in my kitchen!
Happy Thanksgiving Friends and Family! Yes, we had turkey and gravy. Yes, we had potatoes. Yes, we had corn. We did not bother with pumpkin pie because I can’t eat it. We did not have any extra people around so we kept it simple.
It was a lazy day in general so I enlisted Bert’s help in trying a new recipe. It was a recipe suggested by my nutritionist as a way to work more protein into breakfast for a gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free pancakes that incorporated my plant-based protein powder.
Bert’s expertise in making great pancakes from scratch (or even from a pancake mix) is well known in the family. He seems to know just how to adjust the ingredients and the heat under the skillet to make lovely, fluffy pancakes (even on the cook stove at camp!). Since regular pancakes have eggs and milk in them, they have been off my list of acceptable breakfast foods for a long time (so sad).
The following recipe shows the original recipe and the additional ingredients Bert added to make an acceptable pancake. On the right is for a double batch, which is what we made. I really don’t have to be gluten-free, but we thought we’d give it a try.
These were the basic ingredients:
When mixed up it looked like corn bread batter:
When first placed on the griddle, they looked like it might work…
…however, trying to flip them was impossible! The first two pancakes went into the garbage.
So, Bert added flour, oil and some water (exact measurements were not possible at this point.) Remember…this was an experiment!
The next pancake worked much better.
We had to taste this one just to see if it was worth it. It was delicious!
After we nibbled on the first two pancakes, we were left with this lovely stack of thin pancakes.
When they were cool, I carefully placed them on foil and slipped them into the freezer. I’ll package them up so I can have them for breakfast. Next time, we’ll just know to add those extra ingredients at the beginning…but they won’t be gluten-free!
My experimental pancakes ended up being delicious. I’m thankful for Bert’s expertise! I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving Day too!
Water, water everywhere! One pass through the “water” or “soda” aisle in the grocery store can be enlightening. We can buy plain water...bottled from local tap water or spring water from someplace else; carbonated water…with added fizz; flavored water…with added sugar, high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners from sucralose to aspartame, to natural sweeteners from fruit to stevia; and water that’s been incorporated into soda drinks, with sweeteners and caffeine. So many choices and so expensive!
Apparently, many of us are still dehydrated! Hard to believe, I know! I guess our bodies know when we aren’t getting enough water. Sugar water with fizz makes us think we are drinking enough, but our bodies still have to filter out the sugar and other chemicals to make use of the water. So, the advice out there is to drink more plain water!
I’m still working on drinking more water (see https://marykisner.com/from-the-bookshelf-infused-water/). While the water infused with fruit and herbs was interesting and tasty, it was just not easy to work into my day. I prefer bottled water or water in a thermos when I’m driving, or ice water in a restaurant, and I found I was still reaching for diet soda at home. I’m now going to try harder to drink more water and get the diet soda out of my life!
I remembered I had these Sweet Drops in my cupboard and pulled them out.
It says on the bottle: “each tiny 2 oz. bottle will flavor over 200 8 oz. glasses of water!” (Each bottle costs about $6.00). The Drops are made with Stevia, a natural sweetener. Some folks say they don’t like the after-taste of Stevia, but I think they are using too much. Five drops are enough to counteract the chlorine taste in the water and ice cubes and generally make the water “taste” better. The goal is not to make a sweet soda-like drink out of these drops, but to make the water itself more appealing. Some of the flavors come in drops like this:
I think the drops must be “bigger” since this has only 32 servings!
You can find these drops on Amazon and possibly your Health Food Store. Another idea is to add a splash of ReaLemon concentrate to a glass of ice water. It feels like I’ve added a slice of lemon…just like in a restaurant.
So, find your favorite glass, mug or thermos…add cold water and maybe ice…and a few Sweet Drops and hydrate! Enjoy!
I pulled out my recipes today to make some Italian bread. It’s been a while so when I found the recipe I was reminded of my sister-in-law, Patty…my big brother’s first wife. She was a real sweetheart and my mentor when I started my own family.
Here’s an early picture with two of their kids, Eric and Pam. Paul, Todd and Teresa rounded out their wonderful family by the early 1980’s. We were sorry to lose her in 1984, but my memories keep her in my heart to this day.
In 1980, Ted, Kathy and I spent a few days with my brother’s family on the farm in northern Pennsylvania. We borrowed my sister’s motor home while she was out of town and had an adventure going to Uncle Mark’s farm.
Ted was four and a half and Kathy was three. Such sincere smiles!
We parked the motor home in the backyard of the farm house and enjoyed visits with the barn cats and the cousins. Early on the first morning, we were awakened by sheep sounds. What a surprise to look out the window and see we had been surrounded by a whole flock of sheep! That was the beginning of our adventure!
Of course, this post is about making Italian bread so let me just say every time I make this recipe, I’m reminded of those days visiting the farm. Patty was always baking something and I was inspired by her ability to whip out this Italian bread or homemade pizza crust in a flash. We had many conversations about baking with whole wheat flour and making our own yogurt. Great memories!
So…here is the recipe for her Italian bread:
When I make bread, I often start with the liquid ingredients and then add flour. This recipe starts with all the flour in the bowl and then adds the liquid ingredients. I had forgotten this, but it worked out just fine.
At this point, I dumped the dough out onto the floured table, gave it a few “kneads” and put it an oiled bowl to rise.
An hour later, the dough had raised to the top of the bowl.
I shaped it into two long loaves and let it raise on the pan.
After 40 minutes the dough was almost over the side of the pan so it went into a hot oven (400 degrees). In 20 minutes the whole kitchen smelled great!
Of course, before I could get a picture of the loaves, SOMEONE had to have a chunk!
So that’s the story of Patty’s Italian bread recipe, memories and all! Enjoy!
It’s been a while since I made carrot cake but a new pile of carrots from the garden was irresistible. A neighbor who was generous with her potatoes, which we didn’t grow this year, inspired me to make carrot cake, with an extra to share.
Since I knew the carrot cake recipe has many steps, including shredding the carrots, chopping the nuts and measuring out all the other ingredients, I figured it would be easier to just do both cakes at the same time.
Here’s the recipe:
Note: A little change to the recipe…this needs to bake longer than 45 minutes…probably 50-55 minutes. I usually make cupcakes and they cook through fine, but the center of these cakes was still too moist. The toothpick came out clean, but when cool the center was not cooked enough. I kept the cake in the refrigerator and that helped, but in the future, I’ll go back to making cupcakes.
To make two cakes I needed a lot of carrots. Luckily, we had just dug some up from the garden. I still needed a few extra, but the little ones from the store didn’t shred very easily. I finally had to chunk them up before feeding them through the food processor shredding blade. (Note to self: start with more big carrots!)
(Sorry…I forgot to take a picture of the food processor working).
I measured out all the ingredients in matching bowls so I wouldn’t miss anything.
Before I mixed everything all together, I preheated the oven and sprayed the pans…
…and scooped the batter into the pans.
While the cakes were baking, I washed up all the dishes. I was amazed how many dishes I used to make this double batch. Whew!
The cakes turned out just fine…but not quite cooked in the middle. I noticed that didn’t stop us from eating it!
A little sprinkle of powdered sugar dressed it up. My neighbor seemed pleased to give it a try! Enjoy!
Tomatoes galore! I now had about 3 dozen tomatoes sitting on the kitchen table and a decision needed to be made…what should I make with them? While we don’t frequently have homemade pizza, I thought it was time for me to figure out how to make a good vegan (or at least cheese-free) pizza. I have not yet found a good vegan cheese that melts like mozzarella and actually tastes good. I’ll have to do without cheese, so that means the sauce had better taste good!
I decided to make a hearty sauce with the tomatoes plus green peppers, onion, garlic, basil, oregano, salt, pepper, sugar and canned tomato paste.
All my tomato recipes start with dipping the tomatoes into boiling water for about a minute and then shocking them in ice water. This loosens the skins so they are easy to peel. (If you want to see that process in detail, see the post at https://marykisner.com/garden-update-august-9-2021).
Tomatoes ready for their boiling water bath!Chopped tomatoes, onions and green peppers.
When the tomatoes were soft and bubbling, a lot of water had floated to the top. Without stirring the mixture, I was able to scoop off about 3 cups of watery juice so the whole mixture would be thicker.
When completely soft but still lumpy I put the mixture through the food processor to make it smooth. Then I added the tomato paste. This made a nice thick sauce. I added the dried basil, oregano, garlic, salt and pepper and about 1/3 cup of sugar.
This is a 12-quart pot and it was about half full.
We took this whole pot of sauce and put it in the refrigerator overnight. This morning I ran the dishwasher with 19 half-pint jars. (Turns out the canner holds 19 pints, but 24 half-pint jars! Next year…). I froze a few containers that were left over.
Sterilized lids and rings.
Bert started loading the canner with filled jars. (Sorry, no pictures of that exciting process!) However, after a few jars were lowered into the hot water, one broke spilling out sauce all over the other jars. Bert had to start over…taking out the unbroken jars, dumping the hot water, carefully removing the broken jar, rinsing the canner, and adding water and vinegar back (we have hard water and vinegar keeps the sediment off the jars). Luckily, I had an extra jar ready to go so 19 jars went back into the canner.
The jar broke right along the bottom…looked like a clean break. I’ve never had a jar break…ever!
The bottom broke right out!
Now the pressure canning process: Bert has rigged up a burner with propane that we use in the garage. The canner is too big to fit on our glass stove top.
Tomato sauce with additional stuff like peppers, onions and garlic is processed at 10 lbs. of pressure for 30 minutes. It always takes longer than that because the canner has to be vented first, then brought up to pressure, held for 30 minutes and then cooled down until pressure is back down.
So…we sit in comfortable chairs in the garage and visit or read while we wait. Occasionally, neighbors will drop by to see what we’re doing since the garage doors are open and we look open for a visit!
Finally, the jars are ready to come out of the canner. They will sit on my kitchen table for a few hours to cool down. I’ll write on the lids what they contain and the year. After that, they go to the basement shelves…ready for Pizza! I’ll let you know when I give that a try…maybe I’ll find some vegan cheese to try too. Enjoy!
