Culinary experiment of the day

I have a favorite corn muffin recipe from a local vegan cooking teacher Eileen Bresslin.

Today, I swapped out a ridiculous combo of ingredients.

DRY INGREDIENTS
- 1/4 cup flax meal
- about 1/3 cup coconut flour
- 1.5 cups white corn meal
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- hearty pinch salt

WET INGREDIENTS
- 1 tablespoon flax meal that has rested in 4 tablespoons warm water
- about 1/8 cup coconut oil, in liquid form
- 1/4 cup blackstrap molasses
- 1/4 cup local raw honey
- 1 cup vanilla almond milk
- 1/2 cup soy milk
- 1.5 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine dry and wet ingredients in separate batches, then combine.

Stir vigorously to quickly get the lumps out of the coconut flour and get in the oven while still bubbling.

Bake 20 minutes.

I have no idea what will happen with this.

Update: a tad dry but yummy

Rag Tag Meals

tortellini

I made peach muffins yesterday which I thought were mediocre, but my daughter ate six of them so I could be wrong. I didn't post the recipe because I ran out of flour, brown sugar, baking soda and baking powder. I ended up mixing half flour and half oats.

For dinner last night, I made cheese tortellini with a butter/olive oil sauce, with fresh parsley, kielbasa, and peas.

For dinner tonight, we had breakfast. Pancakes my husband made over the weekend and froze. Strawberry ones with real maple syrup. Veggie sausage. Smoothie of raspberry Chobani yogurt, coconut milk, unsweetened soy milk and vanilla carnation instant breakfast. And hot generic grape nuts, with raw local honey, dried blueberries, vanilla almond milk and a touch of blackstrap molasses.

Back on track?

Yesterday I had one of my meltdowns. Between my health (anemia-related issues still kick myass from time to time), the final weeks of school and working too many hours, I was overextended.

And as my psychologist once told me, being overextended makes me crazy.

So I called out sick.

Between the exhaustion, the multiple open wounds on my hands from a fall I took on Saturday, minor babysitter issues AND spilling stuff all over my last clean pair of khakis, I was done. And I was in bed by 7:30 and slept until 7.

Part of my problem stemmed from not eating proper dinners because I had worked 4 nights in a row and of those four nights, the last three I ate dinner on a fifteen minute break. That gets compounded by shifts that start at 3 or 4, meaning even if I eat a good meal before I leave home, it's not enough.
Last night, I let child pick a restaurant and we went out to dinner to celebrate her report card. She selected a franchise based on her desire for chocolate pudding until I pointed out the dairy issue. She selected a kid and ice cream oriented franchise instead, saying she'd forego the ice cream if we gave her a tofutti cutie at home.

Considering the quality of our meal, I should have talked her out of that too. She ordered processed chicken on sticks that was supposed to come with salad, carrot sticks and celery sticks. It came with lettuce. I'll save my other complaints...

This morning I read the label for the apple fritter bread and as I suspected, it has milk. It has more salt than milk, but it does have milk.

Finally, in an act of desperation, I made my famous homemade granola that the child is munching on right now.

The dry ingredients measures about seven cups, with the dressing consisting of 3.5 tablespoons raw local honey, 1/2 cup blackstrap molasses, and 1/2 cup canola oil.

The dry ingredients were about:
- 3.5 cups oats
- 1/2 cup unsalted raw almonds
-1/4 cup dark cocoa dusted almonds
- 1/2 cup unsalted cashews
- 1 cup dried fruit and peanuts from a commercial trail mix
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons tiny chopped candied ginger
- 1 teaspoon fresh ground cinnamon
- 1 box sour peach flavored golden raisins
- 1 cup golden raisins, dried blueberries and dried strawberries

Mix and bake at 300 for 45 minutes in a thin layer on a cookie sheet, turning every 10-15 minutes.

A variation of the Imus Ranch cookbook recipe

New and improved oatmeal bars...

Hi, my name is Angel and I can't follow a recipe to save my life.

This is the original oatmeal bar post:
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2009/09/oatmeal-bars.html

This is what I combined and pressed into an 11 x 7 pyrex dish:

• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 2 cups old-fashioned oats
  
• 1/4 cup chopped dates
• a handful homemade granola (leftover)
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 1/4 cup dried strawberries, chopped
• 1/3 cup brown sugar

And then after I pressed it into the pan I trickled a stream of blackstrap molasses across the top.

Okay, so last time I thought I didn't use enough butter. So I stuck to the recipe in that regard this time and used all the butter. Now they turned out too buttery and still won't stick together, except for the corners that looked brown and overcooked. They stuck. Does that mean I have to leave it in the oven longer? Hmmm....

Now, they taste delicious but like butter candy or some sort of oatmeal fudge... Let me tell you, the strawberries are the best. Next time, I'm going to make oatmeal cookies loaded with extra oatmeal and lots of fruit. Because if I want them to stick together, let's use good old-fashioned flour and egg.

Brown Biscuits

I decided to experiment with Brenda's biscuit recipe that I found the other day:

http://oldfashionedliving.com/biscuits.html
Brenda Hyde's Homemade Biscuits
Ingredients:

2 cups sifted flour

2 tsp. baking powder

4 tablespoons butter or shortening

1/2 tsp. salt

about 3/4 cup milk Sift Flour once, measure, add baking powder and salt, and sift again. Cut in shortening or butter. (this is where I use my hands by rubbing the butter into the flour). Add milk gradually, stirring until soft dough is formed. Turn out on slightly floured board and lightly "knead" for 30 seconds, enough to shape. Roll 1/2 inch thick and cut with 2 inch floured biscuit cutter. Bake on ungreased sheet in a 400 degree oven for 12-15 minutes. Makes 12 biscuits. You can also make tiny tea biscuits that are only 1 1/2 inches wide with a small cutter or glass bottom. These are great served with tea, jam or honey. Makes 24.

I wanted to double it, and somehow my efforts went crazy. So I decided to make brown biscuits.

Angel's Brown (Wheat) Biscuits
(Which once we made them we ate with maple syrup or with peanut butter and raspberry organic fruit spread)
Ingredients:
2 cups white flour
3 cups wheat flour
1.5 cups dehydrated milk
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon sea salt
4-5 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup soy milk
1/4 cup blackstrap molasses
@1.5 cups water

I mixed the flours, the baking powder and the dry milk. Then I added the salt. Then I added the butter. Then I whisked together the soy milk and molasses and diluted with about a half cup of water. I worked the dough with my hands, adding additional water as needed. I think I ended up using 3/4 of the cup. So my estimate on how much water is 1.25 cups total.

For lunch, we made broccoli/mozzerella biscuit pizzas.

And the bread comes out of the oven

As I feared, my daughter lost interest in the bread after two rounds of kneading. Because we made so many loaves, we experimented with some flavors. From left, parmesan cheese, herb and sesame seed, plain white; and the wheats: plain, molasses oat, and honey oat. We're still discussing which will have with my hot spinach dip for dinner.

It's a granola day!

For breakfast, my family had some leftover blueberry pancakes that my husband made recently. I couldn't handle anything as heavy as that at 7 a.m. so I nursed my coffee. When my husband left for work, my daughter and I started making granola.

Why granola?

Because I opened a fresh canister of oats yesterday and my daughter asked for plain old Cheerios at the grocery store and, in preschooler fashion, decided she hated them. Plus, we're low on trail mix so granola would make a nice substitute.

The base for my granola is a recipe from The Imus Ranch cookbook. My stepmother is a huge Imus fan so she bought it, but she doesn't cook. Plus it's primarily vegan so she's certainly not going to do that. Deirdre Imus, while calling herself vegan, does use honey and eggs. She uses eggs because she has her own chickens. So technically, she's ovo-vegetarian.

Basically, I take the Imus recipe for Rio Grande Granola and adapt it for my family's needs. Deirdre Imus combines about 3 cups of oats and dried fruit with spices and about 1/4 cup safflower oil. She flattens it on a sheet and bakes it at 300 degrees for about a half hour, flipping it once at the midpoint.

Now, I double that and in addition to oil I use about 1/4 cup blackstrap molasses for the iron content... Today I had no dried fruit other than raisins and no nuts other than chopped walnut topping so that's what I used. The small nuts are easier for my daughter to chew anyway. Lots of nuts. 1/4 cup in the original recipe. I double that for extra protein... but you'll see.

My plain granola

In a bowl combine: 

2 cups rolled oats;

2 cups Cheerios or other cereal that's been hanging around the house too long;

1/4 cup sugar (I use brown);

1/2 cup raisins or other dried fruit (craisins, dehydrated fruit, etc.);

1/2 cup nuts;

1 tablespoon cinnamon;

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger;

Separately (I use my glass measuring cup) combine: 

1/4 cup oil;

@ 4 tablespoons honey;

1/4 cup blackstrap molasses;

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I only use pure, no imitation in this house)

Pour liquid over dry ingredients and stir until dry ingredients are moist. Spread on large jelly roll pan (Is that what you call the cookie sheets with the lip?) as flat as possible. Bake about 15 minutes at 300. Remove from oven and "flip." I do this by stirring all the granola into the center and flattening it out again. Cook another 15 minutes. Remove from oven. If you want some extra sweetness, sprinkle a couple tablespoons of chocolate sprinkles across the top and let cool slightly before removing from the pan.

Good for a snack. Add to yogurt for a yummy breakfast.