Buckwheat Pancakes

My mom calls these the "best buckwheat pancake recipe" that she has ever found.  I really enjoy the taste and the texture of the buckwheat flour from our Open Oak CSA.  It's not as coarse as buckwheat flour that I have bought in the store so the pancakes feel more like a buttermilk pancake.

I was having a very difficult time getting my cast iron skillet on the right temperature for these pancakes.  On medium they were burning on the outside and were still gooey on the inside.  When I turned the temperature down just one "notch" the pancakes were cooking very slowly, not browning up on the outside and still gooey on the inside.  Unfortunately, I burned more pancakes than were cooked to a perfect golden brown color.  (In retrospect, I think I should have used small amounts of butter in between batches rather than cooking spray.)

The non-burned pancakes were delicious.  Even the burned one with blueberries were good to eat!

This recipe makes a huge amount of pancakes.  For my family, next time I think I'll halve the recipe.  I think I now have more in my freezer than we ate for our meal!

Buckwheat Pancakes 

1 c buckwheat flour (from Open Oak Farm CSA)

1/2 c wheat flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1 c buttermilk (or sour milk)
3/4 c milk
1 T honey
2 eggs
2 T oil
1 banana mashed
1 c blueberries (optional) 

Mix dry ingredients together.  Mix wet ingredients together separately (including mashed banana), and then add to the dry.  Mix thoroughly before cooking. 

Buckwheat pancakes

Sunday Yumm! Bowls

My friend Jessi introduced me to the best "fast food" in our community.  We are lucky that Cafe Yumm! serves the most tasty Yumm! Bowls which are both healthy and delicious.  The bowls have rice with a variety of bean and vegetable toppings--and are always topped with Yumm! sauce. Fortunately, the restaurant also sells their Yumm! sauce in large take-home containers.

My son and I had created our own Yumm! bowl (for me) and plate (for him) for a sunny afternoon picnic.  We used beans (they weren't labeled so I don't know the variety) and purple barley from our last Lonesome Whistle Farm CSA grain share of the spring.  I am trying to get into the habit of cooking up large batches of these so we can use them throughout the week.

My four year old son says about his lunch, "I loved it!  I liked everything.  I had apples, barley, beans, cheese, and broccoli."   He was able to eat all of the ingredients separately just how he likes them.

I took those same ingredients and added Yumm! sauce, salsa (from local Salsa de Casa), cilantro, and garlic stems.  The garlic stems came from our Open Oak Farmers, and we purchased them at the Springfield Farmers Market last week.  I have been missing our CSA vegetable pick-ups so I was very glad to see them at the market.   I mixed everything together so each bite had all of the wonderful flavors.

Our picnic was even complete with a crawling ear whig, which we moved far away from the picnic.

Mushroom and Barley Veggie Patties

We regularly eat frozen veggie patties for a quick weeknight meal.  They taste good; however, they come in a box which is packaged far away and are rather expensive for an individual patty.    I have been thinking about how to make my own veggie patties with all of the grains that we have from our Lonesome Whistle CSA and have explored a few recipe possibilites (including my friend Karen's Salmon and Barley Cakes--it's next on my list!).

While I have been contemplating making veggies patties, throughout the Willamette Valley communities are thoughtfully trying to address hunger and find creative solutions to use our farm resources to help. Food for Lane County has started contracting with local growers to grow more whole grains including high protein lentils.  Marion Polk Food Share has developed a Protein Patty which has 10 grams of protein and can be produced for only 10 cents per patty.  (There is a cute video of the production.)  These stories are inspirational, and provide a good reminder of some of the reasons that my family is trying to eat and cook many of our foods from local sources.

I therefore thought it was so timely when Eugene Local Foods recently posted a New York Times recipe for Mushroom and Grain Cheeseburgers from Martha Rose Shulman and suggested making them with purple barley.  These little patties have 14 grams of protein each and tasted great.  The patties are a little fragile, but I was able to carefully flip them in the pan and move them to our plates.  It was more time consuming that turning on the microwave for 3 minutes with the frozen pre-prepared patties (particularly because the barley needed to cook for about 45 minutes).  I would have liked to use some of our local beans, but I did not have any cooked so relied on a can of beans as in the recipe--next time!

The actual patties were easy to assemble, have fresh ingredients, and we all enjoyed them (toppings included ketchup, provolone cheese, and Yumm! sauce).  With one recipe batch, I was able to make nine patties, which means I will be able to put some of these into the freezer for another future quick weeknight meal.

First Asparagus of the Season

I was so thrilled when we bought our house to learn that it came with a mature patch of asparagus.  Every spring, I eagerly anticipate snapping off the asparagus shoots as they emerge.  Last weekend, we could just see the tips of the first shoots, and I was disappointed to see that some slugs or snails also seemed to be enjoying MY asparagus.

Today, four asparagus shoots (ranging in length from six to twelve inches) were slug free and ready to harvest--the perfect amount to add to our dinner.  It was also great to have my son help snap the shoots in the garden and talk about how they were going to be part of our dinner.

Then, I committed a cooking foul.

I burned the asparagus.  

Gasp!

After a moment of panic, I realized that since the shoots in our yard are really fat I could easily cut away the burned parts and still have enough to eat.

Gigantic sigh of relief.

The asparagus was so delicious.  Tender, melt-in-my-mouth delicious.  I LOVE fresh spring asparagus.

Skillet Asparagus 

Fresh asparagus
Grapeseed oil
Salt
Pepper 

Heat skillet with grapeseed oil on medium high.  Add asparagus (either whole or like today broken into bite sized pieces) and a little salt and pepper.  Cover and cook just a few minutes until asparagus are bright green (not black!).

And look, there are more shoots in the strawberry patch waiting to grow just a bit bigger this week! Yum, yum, yum!

Arikara Bean Hummus

Our recent Lonesome Whistle CSA included Arikara Beans.  I cooked them in the slow cooker like I have with Calypso and  Rio Zape Beans; however, I found that these are very mild and even a little bland in flavor when eaten plain.  We ate them in soup and burritos, but my favorite way to eat these beans was in a delicious batch of hummus I made.

Everyone in my family eats and enjoys hummus--especially immediately after it has been made.  We ate it on tortilla chips, carrots, bread and just plain by the spoonful.  My recipe is adapted from the Moosewood Cookbook for the ingredients; however, I never measure any of the ingredients--just add them to taste--and the recipe varies each time based on what we in the kitchen.

Hummus 

2 cups cooked Arikara Beans (from Lonesome Whistle CSA)
1 lemon juiced
cumin
4 cloves garlic
salt
parsley
tahini
olive oil 

Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until the beans are completely mashed and mixed with the other ingredients.

Cinnamon Buckwheat Waffles

We have several bags of buckwheat flour from our CSA boxes. We could easily have buckwheat pancakes or waffles every weekend for the next six months and still not run out. It's delicious but not a grain that I'm used to having in such large quantities in our house.

Sometime ago when we first came home with fresh buckwheat flour, I found this recipe online, and adapted it just slightly to use straight buckwheat flour rather than a pancake/waffle mix.

It's always a good idea to check the ingredient list before starting to bake or cook. I know this, but I often forget this simple rule. Thank goodness that we have very nice neighbors who we can call on a Saturday morning to borrow baking powder and cinnamon. Without baking powder the waffles are much too dense--just a little bit of baking powder makes a big difference so they were nice and fluffy.

We ate the waffles with vanilla yogurt, Nutella,

Greek yogurt,

butter, and maple syrup.

Yum! I think that it is okay that we have enough flour to make waffles or pancakes every weekend.

Cinnamon Buckwheat Waffles

1 3/4 c buckwheat flour (from Open Oak Farm)

2 c oats

1 T baking powder

1/4 t salt

2 T brown sugar

2 T cinnamon

2 eggs

1 3/4 c milk

1/2 c butter melted

Mix dry ingredients together. Melt butter. Mix milk and eggs together. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Mix well. If the batter is too thick, add more milk. Bake according to waffle iron directions.

Hearty Brownies

On a rainy day recently, my son and I wanted to make brownies. I decided I also wanted to see how many different types of grains from our CSA we could use, and if I could add in some additional fruits and vegetables like a Sneaky Chef recipe. My son and I thought they were chocolatey and good--and also very hearty.

Hearty Brownies

1 banana

1 c walnuts

1/4 c Scottish oats (from Lonesome Whistle CSA)

1/4 c yams

1/2 c cocoa powder (from Euphoria Chocolate)

3/4 c Red Fife whole wheat flour (from Lonesome Whistle CSA)

1/4 c rye flour (from Lonesome Whistle CSA)

1/2 c brown sugar

6T butter melted

1/4 t salt

2 eggs

2 t vanilla

Mix banana, walnuts, yams, and oats together in a food processor until walnuts are pulverized. In a separate bowl, mix together flours, cocoa powder, sugar, and salt. Then, stir in banana mixture. Melt butter then add with eggs and vanilla. Mix thoroughly. Pour into a 9x9" oiled pan and bake 350F for 20 minutes.