Monkey Bread

While I was working over the weekend, my husband and son decided to step in as guest bloggers to make Monkey Bread from America's Test Kitchen. There is a great step-by-step guide and recipe on the America Test Kitchen blog for this gooey pull apart sweet bread.

I came home to the wonderful smell of baked goods.

They followed the recipe precisely, but when they coated each of the 64 dough balls with cinnamon sugar also added filberts (from Thistledown Farm). So beautiful and delicious!

Purple dinner

Beets, beets, and more beets. With our vegetable CSA, we have had many beets this winter. I think I've had more beets this winter that the last 5 combined!

I had one batch of beets in the refrigerator that was starting to go soft, so I boiled them to try to extend the cooking life. One night decided that I needed to use them all up. The same night I also decided to stop being intimidated by my purple barley from our grain CSA. The result: a very purple dinner.

First I made purple barley into the same salad that I made with wheat berries earlier this month. It was good. I like the taste of the barley! My 4-year old said this was his favorite part of the dinner. I've also found that I really like the purple barley with Geek Yogurt for breakfast.

I also made a beet soup adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and a beet and potato salad adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites.

The beet soup tasted ok. It did have a gorgeous red/purple color. I made a lot of modifications to the original recipe, but overall it just lacked some substance. I had one kohlrabi from the CSA--not part of the recipe, but I had roasted it and found that none of us wanted to eat it plain--so it went into the soup pot. This made a huge batch of soup; more than the 4-6 serving that the recipes suggests so we ate it for several days and froze a batch too.

Beet Soup

6 cups quick stock

4 beets boiled, peeled, and cut up (from Open Oak CSA)

1 onion chopped

2 cloves garlic (from Open Oak CSA)

olive oil

1 kohlrabi cubed and baked (from Open Oak CSA)

salt and pepper

Make stock with 6 cups of water, potato peelings (from potato salad recipe), parsley, onion peelings, dill, beet peelings, carrot peelings and cook for 20 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Cook onions in oil until soft. Then add in beets and kohlrabi and saute a few more minutes. Add vegetables to the stock. Puree with hand mixer (this is not in the original recipe, but my vegetables were so unevenly chopped that they looked funny in the soup pot together). Add salt and pepper to taste.

The salad was really purple--well more like the color of pink Pepto-Bismal. Th picture doesn't do it justice, because the beets just continued to leak color the longer it was in the refrigerator. The salad was overly acidic with Nancy's yogurt and apple cider vinegar, so we started to add mayonnaise to each serving and that helped soften the flavor. I think it would be better with fresh dill and a red onion (both in the original recipe, but I didn't have either at home). The color sure would make for an interesting potluck conversation piece.

Beet Potato Salad

5 beets, boiled, and cut into bite sized pieces (from Open Oak CSA)

3 potatoes, peeled, cut into bite sized pieces, and boiled

1/2 c minced onions

1 c Nancy's plain yogurt

2T dried dill

2 t cider vinegar

2 pickles, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Mayonnaise to taste

Boil the cut potatoes in water for 20 minutes until soft. Drain. Place beets and potatoes in a bowl. Add the remaining ingredients and mix together. Chill for at least 30 minutes.

Bean Soup

I love my mother-in-law's bean soup that is served with sauerkraut, but I have never tried to make it because I didn't think it could possibly be as good as hers. We made lots of calls to her to make sure that we got everything right, but in the end my husband said it was nearly perfect!

Making this soup was perfect for a weekend predicted to have snow, and it gave me an opportunity to try out my slow cooker method for Calypso Beans again.

Bean Soup

1 lb Calypso Beans (from Lonesome Whistle CSA)

5 c water

1 lb ham shank (or ham hock)

1/2 lb smoked pork chops (bones cut from meat)

2 polish sausages (or mix of Hungarian, smoked, etc.)

3T butter

flour

sauerkraut

Place beans and water in slower cooker and cook on low for one hour until beans are plump.

Add in ham shank and bones from the smoked pork chops. Cook on low for 6 hours stirring occasionally.

Make Johnny Cakes to put in the oven just before starting the next steps on the stove top.

When fully cooked, remove bones. Transfer soup to a pot on the stove top.

Strip ham from bones and return some to the soup. Cut up pork chop meat and add to the soup. Cut up sausage into rounds and add to the soup (This photo shows one Polish and one Hungarian sausage. We decided to use two Polish in the final soup.)

Turn up the temperature to boil the soup.

Make a roux with butter (or fat) and flour. Mix roux into boiling soup to thicken stirring constantly. Turn down and serve hot with sauerkraut.

Wheat, corn, rye, blueberry muffins

On a cold winter afternoon we needed a preschool friendly activity. Muffin making! These are adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. I like them. They're really substantial and the mix of flours was really nice. (Our cat likes to eat muffins and she liked them too!)

Muffins

1 c whole wheat flour

1/2 c rye flour (from Open Oak CSA)

1/2 c Saskatoon corn flour (from Open Oak CSA)

4 T molasses

1/4 t salt

2 eggs

1 c milk

1/3 c canola oil

1 c blueberries (from McKenzie River Organics)

Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Combine until just mixed. Pour into oiled muffin tins. Bake 375F for 25 minutes.

Refried Calypso Beans

After making Pasta and Calypso Beans, I still had half of a batch of cooked beans. One staple dinner in our family is simple burritos. I normally use refried beans from a can to which I add onions, garlic, cumin powder, and chili. This was so simple to make, and I like the "build your own" aspect to burritos. I liked the Calypso beans and in the pasta recipe, but I'm not convinced they are the right bean flavor for this dinner.

Refried beans and simple burritos

2 c cooked Calypso Beans (from Lonesome Whistle CSA)

olive oil

cumin

chili powder

salt and pepper

shallots (from Open Oak CSA)

garlic (from Open Oak CSA)

spinach

ground beef cooked

tortillas

salsa

plain yogurt

Heat oil in a skillet. Add beans and mash with a spoon. Add in spices to taste. In a separate pan, saute shallots and garlic and wilt spinach. Cook ground beef with same spices. Serve all parts separately or together on a tortilla.

Wheat Berry Salad

I'm looking forward to trying new ways to eat the whole grains from our Lonesome Whistle CSA. I made this wheat berry salad to go with poached chicken. For the deconstructionist 4-year old member of our family, I served just plain wheat berries, cucumbers, spinach, and feta. He said that all the ingredients were good and finished everything on his plate! Yeah! We ate it up so quickly that I didn't even have a chance to take a picture!

Wheat Berry Salad

1 c wheat berries (from Lonesome Whistle CSA)

3 c water

1T olive oil

5 shallots (from Open Oak CSA)

3 cloves garlic (from Open Oak CSA)

several handfuls of spinach

sliced cucumbers

crumbled feta cheese

salt and pepper

Place wheat berries, 1T olive oil, and water in a sauce pan. Bring to a boil and simmer until wheat berries have absorbed all of the water. In another pan, saute shallots and garlic. Add and steam spinach with salt and pepper until bright green. Combine wheat berries, feta, spinach mixture, and cucumbers together.

Pasta and Calypso Beans

I picked up our first bucket of grains and beans from our Lonesome Whistle CSA. Thirteen pounds of flour, beans, barley, wheat berries, and oats. It's the first time I've had a CSA like this, and it's a little intimidating!

I decided to start with a simple family bean soup recipe. However, I cooked the beans too long in my slow cooker without adding the meats. I'll try bean soup again sometime soon. For now, I decided to turn some of the beans into a simple recipe from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites Cookbook.

The calypso beans are so creamy and worked well in this recipe. The recipe was good for our family because it was easy to deconstruct by keeping the beans and pasta separate for a member of our family who is not a fan of tomatoes.

Pasta and Calypso Beans

2 c dry beans (from CSA) (I used 2 c cooked beans in the recipe)

5 c water

5 shallots chopped (from CSA)

2 cloves garlic minced (from CSA)

1 t dried rosemary

olive oil

1 28-oz can of tomatoes

salt and pepper

brown rice pasta

Place the beans and water in slow cooker and cook on low for 4-6 hours.

This over cooked them, but was perfect timing for this recipe.

Boil water for pasta. Add brown rice pasta, cook 1 minute, and then let stand in hot water for 15 minutes.

Cook shallots, garlic, and rosemary in olive oil.

Add in can of tomatoes, 2 cups of cooked beans, salt and pepper. Cook for a few minutes. Blend with immersion blender. Pour sauce over pasta.