The Müsli-on-the-cheap experiment

While I was a college student in Germany, I fell in love with the breakfast mixture of whole grains, nuts and fruits called Müsli. It has all the ease of cold cereal – pour into bowl, pour on milk or stir in yogurt. After it has soaked a short while in milk or yogurt (or my favorite soaking liquid of plain yogurt thinned with almond milk), the grain in Müsli softens up as it soaks up liquid, yielding a bowl of tender grains with exciting bits of crunchy nuts and sweet dried fruits in a creamy sauce. It has only as much sugar as the dried fruits in the mix. Unlike granola, Müsli is cheap and easy to make; no baking required, the ingredients don't need to be pricey ones. Also, it does not have the added oil of granola, just the fats that might be in nuts and grains.

I was hoping I could make a cheaper at-home version of my current favorite brand, Seitenbacher. I wanted to vary the ingredients a bit, but keep the texture mix of crunchy and chewy and the flavors of sweet and tart dried fruits.

Original Seitenbacher Müsli #2 ingredients

Rolled oats
Rolled barley flakes
Dried raspberries
Dried apples
Sunflower seeds
Sliced almonds

Raisins

Net weight: 16 oz

Retail price: $4.99 per 16 oz    (sometimes on sale at $3.99)
Price per ounce: when on sale, $0.25 per ounce

                        When at regular price, $0.31 per ounce

New at-home version

Quaker Old-fashioned Oats, 1 lb 2 oz = $3.50, or $0.20 per ounce

Rolled rye flakes (cheaper than rolled barley), 8 oz = $1.03, or $0.13 per ounce
Sunflower seeds, 6.08 oz = $1.17, or $0.14 per ounce
Dried apples, 2.4 oz = $1.69, or $0.71 per ounce
Golden Raisins 15 oz = $4.99, or $0.33 per ounce
Pecan pieces, on sale 16 oz = $8.49, or $0.53 per ounce
Dried raspberries not available (maybe I could dry some from my back yard next year!)

Trial recipe for Müsli-on-the-cheap

7.5 oz oats (cost: $1.50)

5.25 oz golden raisins (cost: $1.73)
4 oz rye flakes (cost: $0.52)
4 oz pecan pieces (cost: $2.12)
3.25 oz sunflower seeds (cost: $0.45)
2.4 oz dried apples, chopped (cost: $1.69)

Total weight of finished cereal: 26.4 oz (1 pound, 10.4 oz)

Total price of finished cereal: $8.01
Price per ounce = $0.30

I think I can still do this a bit cheaper. I love pecans, but pecan pieces had a bit too strong of a flavor along with sunflower seeds, and I decided I’d like a more grain-based cereal with fewer nuts, seeds and apples per spoonful. On my next attempt, I’m going to increase the amount of grains per batch and reduce the amounts of nuts, seeds and apples. I might change the nuts to sliced almonds instead of pecans next time, but I will have less of whichever nut is involved. Perhaps the rolled oats at the natural foods store will be cheaper per ounce than the Quaker oats, too. That store had rye flakes that cost less than my oats!

Update after next grocery run: store brand old-fashioned oats on sale, 1 pound 2 oz for $1.50!

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Smoothie #9

This is a fizzy, purple smoothie Andrew whipped up from the fruits we froze together this summer. 

Smoothie #9

1 banana
approximately 1/4 pound each frozen peach slices and frozen blueberries
1 cup unsweetened plain almond milk
peach-flavored sparkling water

Blend all together until smooth.

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Two more ways to use a mountain of chili powder

I taught a fermented foods workshop here at our house in July and, in the course of researching recipes and techniques, decided I had to finally try to make kimchi/kimchee (choose your favorite English spelling, it's 김치 in Korean).

The three different batches of white radish kimchi I made before I got one that was edible (sorry about that still-super-salty batch you were subjected to, Mom and Dad) is another story. This story is about the chili powder that goes into kimchi.

There's an Asian grocery here in town that I like to frequent called Shanghai Market. The proprietor always knows which item to recommend. You see a shelf with five different types of soy sauce in several brands from three different countries and don't know which you want? This guy can tell you what the Japanese cooks are using, what the Chinese restaurants prefer and what sweet soy sauce is good for, plus let you know the run-down from least to most expensive. He helps me translate the labels on  pickled vegetables so I know what's in the package and hasn't yet said "I don't have that" to my occasional requests for unusual ingredients.

He can also sell you the right Korean chili powder to make kimchi. The only question you have to be able to answer is, "Would you like five pounds or three pounds?"

Once I took a minute to get over my disbelief that any ground spice would be sold in such massive quantities, I decided on three pounds and immediately started thinking about how to give away at least two pounds. This is the gallon jar I stored it in when I got home. It’s sitting on the table next to a 12-oz glass. 

Of course, I had to start giving it away to everyone I could think of who might be even just a little bit interested in trying some. And for every person who said yes, there was at least 1/3 to ½ cup. And I still have enough to make several batches of kimchi at home. Heck, I’ve made three batches already and still have more than a cup of chili powder left. I figure the original three-pound quantity must be enough to make batches of kimchi for a family of eight to eat every day for an entire year. And have enough powder to make each batch really spicy.

So, clearly this chili powder needs to turn up in some other dishes, too. The first was a savory rice porridge, since I was inspired to try more savory breakfasts after reading Fuschia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice Chinese home-cooking book this summer. 

Breakfast Porridge “Better Luck Next Time”
Serves two, or one VERY hungry person who doesn’t mind the taste

1 Tbsp butter or vegetable oil
1 tsp Korean chili powder
2 cups water
1 cup leftover cooked rice
1 Tbsp miso paste with dashi included
10 sorrel leaves
2 eggs
toasted sesame oil to taste

Melt butter or vegetable oil in a large pan. Cook Korean chili powder in the oil. Pour in water and rice. As water nears boiling point, stir in miso paste. Drop in sorrel leaves and crack eggs on top. Let eggs poach without stirring them as the rice and sorrel cook. When finished, drizzle with toasted sesame oil.

Sadly, I would not recommend making this one again the same way. I liked the look of the reddish stew with cooked rice and the poached egg on top, but sorrel was the wrong choice of vegetable for the dish. Too sour. I was going for a salty-fishy flavor with the miso that has dashi in it, but this was an odd combination with lemony sorrel. Sorrel is also not good with toasted sesame oil, so clearly a different green is important for the next try.

The next soup was a light dinner inspired by a pork and tofu soup recipe in my Korean cookbook. It uses some of the same ideas from the breakfast recipe, but meshes them with this much better soup recipe’s ingredients and some Malabar spinach from our weekly vegetable box. This attempt turned out to be good enough that Andrew and I each wanted seconds and he asked me to make it again whenever we get the same greens in the CSA box. 

Malabar spinach is not actually spinach, but a different equatorial plant that has a spinach-like flavor. Its texture is a bit slippery like okra when cooked in soup. 

Here are some of the soup ingredients lined up on the cutting board, waiting their turn to go into the soup pot:

Asian-style Rice and Vegetable Soup with Malabar Spinach 
Serves 2 to 4

2 Tbsp canola oil with 1 tsp dark sesame oil
½ cup small-diced onion
2 garlic cloves, smashed
2 cups Malabar spinach leaves, measured and then chopped
4 oz shiitake mushrooms, thickly sliced
1 cup leftover cooked rice
1 tsp Korean chili powder
8 oz firm tofu, cubed or cut in strips
2 Tbsp miso with dashi included
3 cups water
soy sauce 

Heat oil, cook onion until tender, add garlic and cook a minute or so. Stir in chili powder. Add mushrooms and cook until tender. Add rice, separate the grains with your spoon, pour in water and add tofu. Bring to a boil. Stir in miso paste and Malabar spinach and cook until spinach wilts. Serve with soy sauce on the side so each diner can season to taste.

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Fresh dill: will I ever use it all?

Occasionally, I will purchase fresh dill at the supermarket for a recipe, which always leaves me with a whole bunch of unassigned fresh dill that taunts me from the refrigerator until it goes bad. The same happens, but in smaller quantities, with the bunches of fresh dill from the Henry's Farm CSA box.

I feel a great sense of relief when I discover something else that I like to make with fresh dill. Admittedly, it is not one of my favorite herbs. That's why it lingers in the fridge and taunts me. "Ha, ha ha ha haa, you only have one dish using me that you'd be willing to eat this week!" Relief this week came in two forms: one, a different dish using dill; and two, other people to share the dish so the dill would finally run out.

Here's my breakfast from Wednesday:

A slice of whole-wheat toast, topped with asparagus and scrambled eggs with fresh dill.
Saute the asparagus in olive oil mixed with a little butter, scramble up the eggs with milk and add those to the pan, and then sprinkle on fresh chopped dill, salt and pepper when the eggs start to set. 

Andrew's parents were visiting this week, and after seeing my breakfast, his mom decided she had to get in on this dill-on-eggs idea, so she added it to her over-easy eggs the next day. I threw a little dill in with the fennel greens on our pasta Thursday, and Andrew and I had the rest of the dill on Saturday's breakfast omelet that also included orange bell pepper and a little cheddar cheese.

The main problem with me and dill is that a little dill goes a long way. Its flavor is a bit intense and distinctive, so I really have to want to taste dill wherever it appears. I don't make pickles or use vinegar much anymore, so there goes one potential use of massive quantities of dill. Having this simple little breakthrough in my dill mental block could open up other ideas about dill. Perhaps my homemade kefir salad dressing could use a bit of dill blended into it next time. I know it's tasty sprinkled on fish, but how about making green garlic sauce for fish with some dill instead of only parsley? Hey, I'm on a roll here, and if any of these ideas happen, I'll tell you about how they worked.

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Another try at breakfast strata

It's been quite a while since I toyed with the breakfast casserole strata in the kitchen. In the last documented attempt, the strata was really subpar.

In the new version, it's still two layers of bread with a filling of sausage and vegetables in between, all held together by an egg mixture and baked till the bread starts to toast.
The differences:
1. no turmeric
2. this time, I had the mustard I wanted
3. different sausage
4. different spices
5. cheese topping

"Let's try this again" leftovers-for-breakfast strata
 serves at least 4
4 large eggs
1 cup milk (I used almond milk)
1 tsp dried sage leaves, crushed (4 to 5 leaves)
1/2 cup chopped parsley (loosely in the measuring cup, not packed)
1 orange bell pepper, chopped finely
2 leftover bratwurst-sized sausages, sliced (I had chicken-apple sausage)
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp salt
3 Tbsp butter
6 to 8 slices dry bread
1 cup shredded cheddar

Oil 8x8 baking pan. Lay 3 to 4 slices of bread down to cover the bottom of the pan. Saute chopped pepper and sausage together in butter. When heated through, add parsley and sage. Spread veg/meat mixture on top of bread in baking pan. Cover with half of shredded cheese and top with 3 to 4 slices of bread to cover evenly. Whisk eggs with milk, mustard and salt. Pour over contents of pan, soak at least 1 hour (can soak overnight if desired to bake at breakfast time). Top with the rest of the shredded cheese and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately 30 minutes or until eggs are set and top layer of bread is toasted.
This dish is great fresh out of the oven, but do let it sit 10 minutes before cutting into portions. This time, I made the dish the night before I wished to eat it and cut portions to reheat in the microwave for a couple of breakfasts for me and Andrew.

I'm getting more daring with the use of eggs and cheese as my sometimes-touchy guts will allow. I'll have to admit that this time, I still didn't get things quite right and the strata was once again not a Heather-friendly dish. I suspect there was something about the chicken-apple sausage that I wasn't digesting well because not only the leftovers affected me, but also the serving of sausage with lunch on an earlier day. Maybe I could have skipped the cheese topping, too.

Well, this dish was fun until it suddenly wasn't fun anymore. The flavor was much improved over the last strata, and I was glad to have a way to use up leftovers of chicken sausage and parsley.

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Mmm, breakfast dishes

A co-worker of mine declared yesterday that the only meal he cooks with any consistency is breakfast, "because it's easy."

Yup, he's so right. Breakfast foods are so easy, they are all I have left in me. I have spent a bit more than a month not feeling like cooking anything at home because I've been slowly getting over some major back, hip and leg pain due to a bulging spinal disc. I can make it through work okay now (just constant discomfort, not real serious pain any more), but all the way through this healing process, the last thing I want to do after exhausting myself cooking at work is to come home and stand up for another hour to cook. Thankful every day for having a husband who is a capable cook, so we are still getting consistent hot meals with fresh foods.

But I'm still making breakfast for myself on my day off. Or breakfasts for guests we've had over on several weekends in October and November. French toast, fried eggs on toast, a bit of oatmeal, whatever goes well with coffee or tea and people's moods.

Today's breakfast, eggs over-easy on English muffins and a lettuce salad. Last weekend, Scottish oats cooked into a nice, thick cereal and served with butter and honey.

However, since I have not made any new amazing discoveries in the realm of breakfast, I've been on hiatus from this blog for a long while. Today, I'm back to offer my take on French toast, a long-time breakfast specialty of mine.

French toast
serves two people at least two slices

2 eggs
about 1/3 cup almond milk
4 to 5 slices of day-old bread 
one dash of whichever you are in the mood for today: powdered ginger, cinnamon powder, ground nutmeg, ground cardamom, perhaps a combination of two of these
canola oil (add one tablespoon of butter if desired)
maple syrup

Note on breads: ordinary American sliced bread in packages often has a better texture if it is lightly toasted first before frying. The most awesome French toast is with French bread that has gotten too hard to eat by itself. But I don't insist on only the best bread. I'm not picky about whether the bread is white or whole wheat or has raisins or seeds in it.

Coat the bottom of a nonstick pan with canola oil and put on medium heat. Add one tablespoon of butter to pan if desired. Whisk together eggs, milk and spices. Add more milk if the mixture is too thick to soak into bread.  Dip pieces of bread into the mixture to fully coat. Fry until golden brown, flip and fry the other side, and serve hot with maple syrup.

If you've been using pancake syrup (which is usually corn syrup with maple flavoring) and have the chance to purchase real maple syrup from maple tree sap, make the switch! Maple syrups from different parts of North America have slight differences in flavor, which is part of the fun. All are less mellow, more maple-y and often thinner than pancake syrup.

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Cherries!

The sour cherry tree in our backyard is back in its best form this year, yielding an impressive amount of cherries. There are enough for the squirrels to get some dessert-on-the-branch plus we have as many as we can stand to pit for cooking now or freezing for later.

Here's the crop from the first two days of excellent picking, filling four 32-oz yogurt containers:

Sorry, no pictures of us at the table with a pile of cherries on the table and two cherry pitters. Too much juice squirting all over, didn't want to get any on the camera. Thanks to Andrew's mom, Diane, for warning us that cherry juice will even get on the wall during the pitting process. We're glad we put up that old bedsheet to catch any stray cherry spray.

Some close-up views of the fruit on the tree:

So much more exciting than last year, when there was only one cherry we found that ripened well enough to eat. We've been out to pick about every two days for a week and the bounty hasn't stopped yet. These cherries are very tart to eat plain, but their flavor when cooked and lightly sweetened is dramatically more complex and delicious.

The ongoing list of things we've made with our cherries so far:
cherry puree (kind of like applesauce, but with cherries)
cherry sauce (cherries cooked in light syrup)

honey-sweetened cherry sauce
cherry bread pudding, recipe from Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks by Butler, Hieatt, Hosington
frozen cherries
cherry bounce (cherries preserved in sugar and whiskey)

 cherry jam

It's been a busy two weeks of cherry harvest.

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Scrambling veggies and eggs

The ingredients in today's lunch:
1 small zucchini, sliced thinly
3 Tbsp butter
2 eggs, scrambled with a little milk (I chose unsweetened almond milk, you may choose differently)
salt and pepper strewn over all to taste
1 heaping tbsp each of ajvar and light sour cream, mixed together in a separate bowl

The cooking method: butter melted in pan, zucchini browned on both sides in butter, heat turned down and eggs cooked in pan w/zucchini, seasoned the whole mess and place on a plate, smeared with ajvar/sour cream and served with multigrain bread. This dish is very green and orange, and it's delicious!

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Spanish Tortilla

This one's not a flat, floppy bread. Tortilla in Spain is a thick, eggy dish fried in a skillet, filled with potatoes and possibly other vegetables and meat. It is reminiscent of an omelette in that it's eggs filled with whatever you think would taste good, but it isn't an egg wrapped around the filling. It is reminiscent of quiche in that it's solid and served in wedges, but it does not have a crust and isn't baked. Tortilla has commonalities with other dishes, but it isn't really exactly like anything else.

To treat my friend Laura yesterday for lunch, I improvised a tortilla, made in the spirit of one that I've made before at work. Not having a photo of the whole thing, I'll describe it in words. My tortilla was a thick, seasoned "cake" of eggs holding together a lot of potatoes and parsley, browned on all sides by the frying pan. Here's how the recipe works:

Spanish Tortilla
serves 6 as main dish, 8 to 12 as tapas dish

7 large eggs
4 medium-sized potatoes, diced
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 tsp smoked paprika (Spanish pimentón)
seasoned salt to taste (the kind with garlic and spices mixed w/the salt)
fresh-ground pepper to taste
4 Tbsp olive oil

Heat olive oil in a nonstick 10-inch skillet with sloping sides. Fill the bottom of the pan with diced potatoes and fry until golden brown on most sides. While potatoes are cooking, crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk until yolks are fully incorporated. When potatoes are browned, sprinkle with paprika and stir until oil is red. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with parsley, then pour over the eggs. Cook over medium heat. When eggs start to set, use a heatproof spatula to pull up edges and lean the pan so egg mixture that is still liquid gets to the edge of the pan. When eggs are fully set and starting to get a bit of a crispy skin on the bottom, put a large plate over the skillet. Flip the pan upside down, depositing the tortilla on the plate. Slide it back into the pan to cook the other side. When the second side also gets a crispy skin, cut the tortilla into 6 wedges and serve hot.

Serve in smaller wedges if you are making the tortilla as a tapa (appetizer to go with drinks). I served the tortilla with a salad for a light lunch. More fillings to go with the potatoes might include chickpeas, Spanish chorizo sausage, greens, cooked mushrooms, cooked garden vegetables, anything that tastes good with eggs and isn't going to give off a bunch of liquid to make the tortilla lose its texture.

I'm told that the tortilla tastes good cold as leftovers, but I'm more excited about eating it hot.

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My favorite food of late summer: peaches

I assumed I was leaving behind the best stone fruits in the world when I left Alberta, where the amazing orchards of between-the-mountain-ranges British Columbia provided summertime fruit bliss. But here in Central Illinois, our farmer's markets are graced with freestone peaches from southern Illinois, where the trees grow large yellow-orange fuzzy peaches with magenta centers. They look gorgeous, they smell divine when they finish ripening on the countertop, and I can buy them for $8 a half-peck bag (12 to 15 peaches). The farmer who comes up to Saturday's market in Bloomington often gives me an extra peach or two so the bag is overflowing. They are every bit as delicious as the best offerings fresh from the farm stand in B.C.

I get so excited seeing the piles of peach crates in the farmer's truck that I can't get that stupid "Peaches" song from the 90s from the Presidents of the United States of America out of my head.
Millions of peaches, peaches for me
Millions of peaches, peaches for free

Each year for three summers here, I've tried a new recipe or two that I hope will bring out the best in Illinois peaches. Here is the stand-out dessert of peach season 2011.

Peach Cobbler
about 8 servings

Peach sauce:
8 to 10 fresh peaches, peeled, pitted and sliced
2 Tbsp Minute tapioca
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 to 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 Tbsp cold butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix all the above ingredients in an 8-inch by 11.5-inch glass baking pan. Dot with small pieces of butter. Let the mixture sit while you prepare the topping.

Cobbler topping:
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup cold Crisco shortening
3/4 cup milk (or almond/soy/rice milk)
1-2 Tbsp sugar

Combine dry ingredients. Cut in shortening until no lumps are present. Mix in milk to make a thick but wet batter. Add more milk if batter is dry or doughy. Drop batter onto peaches by large tablespoons. Sprinkle batter with sugar. Bake 30 minutes uncovered in 375 degree oven until batter is golden and sauce is bubbly.

Serve warm or cold, with or without cream poured over each serving. I eat this cobbler straight out of the oven as dessert with dinner, then again at breakfast with yogurt and/or granola and one more time after dinner if there is any left.

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What grows together, goes together: strawberries and rhubarb

All of the rhubarb recipes in my recipe box are from family members and friends who passed along their new ways of serving up this stalk so that it would take us a good long rhubarb season to start running out of ideas.

Grandma's strawberry-rhubarb jam and mom's strawberry-rhubarb bars are old favorites of mine that pair up the sweet tang of spring's fresh strawberries and the assertive tartness of rhubarb. This week, I decided to try out the classic combo in a new application, a revision of my other grandma's recipe for rhubarb sauce. The original sauce, using rhubarb and canned pineapple, is phenomenal on ice cream or mixed into yogurt or oatmeal for breakfast. But I had 2 pounds of strawberries, a very small bunch of rhubarb from the CSA box, and no pineapple.

I was not a good little girl about measuring my sugar as I was adding it, so I leave that amount up to your taste. Start at 1/2 cup and if the sauce is not sweet enough, add 1/4 cup more at a time until it's right.

The new sauce was a hit on ice cream at our anniversary/birthday party last night, with one guest asking for the recipe. If I'm lucky, he'll thank me by dropping off some rhubarb from his back yard.


Strawberry-Rhubarb Sauce
at least 10 servings

1/4 cup instant tapioca
1/2 tsp salt
2.5 cups water
2 pounds strawberries, sliced
1 cup rhubarb
1/2 cup to 1 1/2 cup sugar, to taste

Put all ingredients (start with 1/2 cup of sugar) into a large pot and bring to a boil. Taste for sweetness and add more sugar if needed. Turn down heat and simmer briefly until fruits are slightly softened, stirring often to prevent tapioca from sticking to bottom of pot. Serve when cool. Best after overnight refrigeration.

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Smoothie #7

A sweet and tangy combination my husband put together for breakfast today. We both thought it could stand to taste a little more like kiwi, so next time we'd probably add two kiwis.

1 kiwifruit, peeled
1 banana
12 frozen dark sweet cherries
equal amounts of cranberry-pomegranate juice and unsweetened almond milk, to taste

Add all ingredients to blender and blend until smooth and pourable. Dairy milk or unsweetened soy/rice milk could be substituted.

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Smoothie #6

Today's snack smoothie to take a break from chores. Very orange, a nice mix of sweetness with earthy tones and tanginess.

Smoothie #6
1 mango, peeled, cut in chunks
1 carrot, peeled, cut in chunks
250 mL unsweetened almond milk
250 mL cranberry/pomegranate juice

Put mango and carrot chunks into blender with liquids. Blend until carrot is fully incorporated.

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Soy substitute week

This week has been a week for experimenting with soy products to stand in for eggs and dairy. The impetus and guide for the experiments was the book Tofu and Soyfoods Cookery by Peter Golbitz, specifically the recipes Mock Sour Cream Tofu Dressing and Scrambled Yuba.

Experiment 1: vegan mushroom stroganoff sauce, with Mock Sour Cream Tofu Dressing based on silken tofu standing in for sour cream. The basic ingredients are silken tofu, oil, lemon juice, and salt. I served the sauce over no-yolk egg noodles. I am perfectly comfortable putting vegan sauce on non-vegan noodles, but I would have used other noodles if I were serving actual vegans.

The results here were mixed. The sauce's flavor, which I initially thought was too lemony, settled down by the time I ate leftover noodles the next day and I liked how closely it tasted to sour cream. Better than other packaged soy sour creams I've purchased in the past. The texture was disappointing. The oil tended to separate out, making the sauce greasy instead of creamy and smooth. I think if I were going to make this dish again, I'd prepare the mock sour cream with a stabilizer like cornstarch or mustard or something and do it a day ahead to let the flavors blend.

Experiment 2: scrambled yuba, which I served on toast. This no longer seemed like a breakfasty scrambled egg dish when I added carrots, onions and mushrooms, nor did the garlicky tamari-flavored seasonings recommended scream breakfast to me. It was a nice light dinner.

Major challenges included finding yuba and making it taste like something when I didn't have all the ingredients called for in the recipe.

First, how I found the item. The owner of my favorite local Asian grocery had dried yuba on hand, but he didn't know it right away because he was not familiar with the Japanese name yuba for the product. His native language is Chinese, but he understood exactly what I wanted when I described it in English. Yuba is the skin skimmed off of boiled soy milk. I wasn't prepared to make gallons of homemade soy milk and skim its skin to get fresh yuba, and frozen just isn't available in my area.

Second, yuba does not naturally taste like anything. This ingredient is mostly about texture, like tripe or oatmeal. To borrow a phrase from Douglas Adams, it is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike scrambled eggs. No fluffy softness. No eggy richness. No buttery finish. Not even yellow, more like beige. In the pan, it vaguely looks like slices of very thin fried egg whites. I had run out of nutritional yeast flakes and forgot to get some for this dish, so therefore I didn't have the most essential flavoring called for in this recipe. I decided not to worry about it and make it taste entirely different. I used sweet soy sauce (kecap manis), garlic powder, chicken broth powder, the above-named vegetables, and sesame oil and fresh parsley for garnish.

If the goal here is to make something that is like scrambled eggs for breakfast, the experiment failed. I believe it would continue to fail even if I had followed the recipe exactly but with my dried yuba. Reconstituted dried yuba does not look, feel or taste like egg. I don't know whether the fresh or frozen could entirely take care of these issues, but it would at least probably be closer in texture to slightly overcooked eggs. The nutritional yeast flakes would have lent a more cheese-like flavor. If the goal is to make a yummy protein and vegetable dish with a new food, I think the experiment was successful. My husband and I like yuba enough to try it again sometime in the future. The possible flavors to combine with it are endless, so we'll keep trying new ways of preparing it.

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Bready winter comforts

On Wednesday evening, a friend served up some amazing bread pudding with a whiskey cream sauce and some of her homemade fruitcake, soaked liberally with rum. I'm sure the alcohol content in these foods had something to do with the warm and happy feelings that came with eating them, but bread pudding is just cuddly and comforting all on its own.

Leaving out dairy and egg doesn't detract from the delight in eating bread pudding. Here's the vegan bread pudding recipe I've revised from its original creation last winter/early spring.

Vegan Bread Pudding
serves at least 8

8 cups day-old whole wheat vegan bread chunks
4 oz. dried cherries
4 oz dried plums (prunes), chopped
2 oz raisins
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
4 c almond milk
1 1/2 tsp Ener-G egg replacer whisked with 2 Tbsp water
1/4 c plus 1 Tbsp demerara sugar
1 Tbsp canola oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix together bread chunks and fruit in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix liquids, sugar and spices. Pour the liquid over bread and let it sit 10 minutes. Put the pudding mixture into a greased 9 x 13 inch baking pan and bake about 30 minutes until golden brown.

This pudding is equally good hot or cold, as a main/side dish or as dessert or even for breakfast. It can be frozen after baking and reheated in the oven straight out of the freezer.

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Breakfast skillet today

Something easy, warm and comforting for a late breakfast on a day full of chores today. This one is a nice mishmash of leftovers I had in the fridge. The basic recipe is not a really strongly flavored breakfast and could probably use some chili-garlic sauce or fresh herbs or salsa to dress it up.

Veggie breakfast skillet
for one very hungry person or two lighter portions

1/2 cup liquid egg substitute
a splash of milk or soymilk
1 or 2 tsp dijon mustard
1 or 2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp chopped green bell pepper
6 oz fresh mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup leftover cooked rice
salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Whisk together the egg substitute, milk, and mustard in a bowl. In a large skillet, heat the oil and saute the mushrooms and green pepper. When tender, add the cooked rice and cook, stirring, until rice is heated through. Pour the egg mixture over the contents of the skillet and stir occasionally to scramble the eggs. Sprinkle with salt and pepper just before the eggs are done.

Ideas for additional vegetable add-ins: roasted red pepper, leftover cooked broccoli or carrots, onions, tomatoes (at the end of cooking), leftover stir-fried vegetables

Eggs and meat are a classic combination and this breakfast would also be good with bits of leftover sausage, ham, bacon, steak or roast beef or pork. Keeping the same amounts of other ingredients, meat packs enough calories to make this a recipe for two or three servings.

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Dreaming about cherries until next spring

Andrew and I recently moved to a new house, and we were pleasantly surprised to find a cherry tree loaded with fruit in the back yard on moving-in weekend. The tree is pictured below.

The cherries are of the red tart variety. Sadly, this year, few of them were picked and processed because it took a while to find both the time for picking and the pots and sugar for preparing the cherries. Also, I needed to make time to buy a cherry pitter, since I had no intention of fussing around with paring knives or hairpins for extracting the pits from pounds of cherries.

We got a pound or so of cherries off the tree as the last of the fruits ripened. I pitted them and stewed them with a little demerara sugar, making a simple but special oatmeal topping for breakfast with our first houseguests. The flavor was described by one guest as "like mixing cherry cobbler and oatmeal."

Dreaming about what to do with the crop of cherries next year, when I'll be ready for them. Cherry pie. Cherry crisp/cobbler. Cherry jam. Dried cherries. More stewed cherries. Cherry bread pudding. I just hope there are enough cherries to supply all my ambitions.

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Try a different grain for breakfast: bulgur wheat

This dish was my second response to the challenge posed at work by an entire batch of bulgur wheat that I had overcooked. (First response: mixing it with parmesan cheese to make a crust for quiche). It was just a little bit too exploded and sticky for the tabbouleh for which it was intended, but it was still fine to use for something else. If only we had another bulgur wheat recipe...

Bulgur Breakfast Pudding
makes at least 6 one-cup servings, more if served in small ramekins

3 cups cooked bulgur wheat
2/3 cup raisins
1/3 cup dried cherries
1/3 cup craisins
1/3 cup pecan pieces
2 cups whipping cream*
1 3/4 cup whole milk*
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ginger powder
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1 Tbsp flour

* lower-fat options: 2 cups half-and-half and 1 3/4 cup 2 percent milk OR no cream and 3 3/4 cups whole milk, but resulting pudding will not be as thick when hot and won't taste as creamy

Mix all ingredients in large saucepan except the flour. Bring to a simmer SLOWLY over medium-low heat. Stir frequently. When the mixture is hot, add flour by stirring in small amounts with a whisk to avoid lumps. Simmer on low heat until mixture is thick like oatmeal, stirring frequently to avoid scorching the bottom. Spoon into cereal bowls or ramekins. Serve hot or cold. Keeps a shape if chilled in a greased mold.


Note on cream: for best quality and flavor, don't bother with creams that have anything besides dairy products listed on the package. Filler ingredients make both the price and the quality lower.

It's sad that I could never eat this for breakfast myself as the dairy in it would make my guts very unhappy first thing in the morning. I really enjoyed the little tastes I took while creating the recipe.

Although I intended it to be a stand-alone breakfast food, I'm sure a small serving would be a nice addition to a brunch or make an interesting molded dessert.

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Mmmm, oatmeal.

Nothing too complicated about this one, just simple, tasty, healthy breakfast goodness. Oatmeal is not just for growing kids, and it does not have to taste boring. It's the perfect thing for weekend mornings when we wake up late and don't want lunch yet, but I'm not ambitious enough (or feeling too post-party queasy) to make my usual special brunch item, French toast.

What's in the cupboard? oatmeal for two

heaping 2/3 cup quick oats or old-fashioned oats
2/3 cup water
2/3 cup unsweetened soy milk (use more if oatmeal gets too sticky)
1/4 cup dried apple slices
1/4 cup dried cranberries
2 or 3 Tbsp pecan pieces
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1 or 2 Tbsp maple syrup per portion

Put oats, water and soy milk in 2 qt pot. Add dried fruit and ginger. Heat until simmering, cook at a low bubble until oatmeal is at desired level of tenderness and stickiness, stirring often, adding more milk if desired. Cook time will be longer for old-fashioned oats. When oatmeal is finished, stir in pecan pieces and pour into two bowls. Drizzle each portion with maple syrup to taste.

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