Pumpkin Bread

As a kid I would look forward to dessert. When dinner was finally over, out would come the brownies and to my horror nuts would be laced throughout the chocolaty goodness. I vowed that no matter what I would never, ever put nuts in desserts. Because that is what old people do. And even now I don't want to admit that I have crossed that barrier that separates the young from the old. So no nuts will ever grace my sweet breads or my desserts.

This bread was calling to me for two weeks before I got around to making it. When it finally would not be ignored any longer, the ingredients came together into a dense, moist loaf of pumpkin goodness.

I brought one loaf to a friend with a new baby and when he picked up the bag his eyebrows shot up and he said, "Whoa! This is heavy!" Yep, it is.

Pumpkin Bread

5 small or 4 larger bananas, mashed

1-28 oz can or 2 15-oz cans pumpkin

3/4 c brown sugar (or leave it out if you want)

1/2c honey

1/2 c oil

4 eggs

5 c whole wheat pastry flour (or whatever flour)

2 t baking powder

2 t baking soda

1 t salt if

4 t pumpkin pie spice

2 t cinnamon

up to 3 C any other extras such as flax seeds, wheat germ, bran flakes, or cranberries.

Mix everything in a large bowl, stir to combine everything, then fill 2 greased, waxed paper lined loaf pans. Bake at 325 for 1 hour.

Stacks and Stacks of High Protein Pancakes

Isn't it strange that the most widely accepted breakfast foods are terrible ways to start the day? Like donuts. Nobody would ever think of skipping dinner and eating just dessert. If they weren't so dang tasty they wouldn't fool any of us into thinking they could be called breakfast.

I ran across this recipe several weeks ago and finally tried it this weekend. It looked so interesting to me. Sometimes people talk about wonderful light, fluffy pancakes, and I never understood where they were coming from. I like dense, thin pancakes, and these are just the ticket.

They are satisfying and, as a bonus, Kevin doesn't like them, so I get to eat them all. Are you wondering how I can eat 4 eggs at one sitting? Let's never mention it again.

High Protein Pancakes

1/4 C whole wheat flour

1/4 C cottage cheese

4 eggs

1/2 C milk or yogurt

Blend everything with a hand blender until it is smooth. Cook like pancakes on a hot griddle. They will be very thin.

Dutch Babies with Rhubarb Sauce

You know it's bad when you start eating babies. I mean....that's about as bad as it could possibly get. But here we are serving Dutch Babies to dinner guests. Just for future reference, I have absolutely no hard feelings for anyone who is Dutch. If they didn't have such tender, succulent babies I would leave them alone.

Dad cut a bunch of rhubarb from their yard and brought it out to us. When he does something, he goes all out and he ended up bringing a WHOLE grocery bag full of rhubarb stems. We had no choice but to get into the kitchen and make something with it.

Dutch Babies

1/3 C milk

1/3 C flour

2 large eggs

1 T butter, melted

1/4 t baking powder

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a muffin pan in the oven to warm it while blending the ingredients. Blend all ingredients until batter is smooth. Put batter into 12 muffin cups. Bake for 10 minutes; reduce heat to 350 degrees and continue to bake for 6 minutes, or until puffed and golden, and centers are firm.

While the dutch babies are cooking, hull and halve 1 pint of strawberries and chop 2 ripe peaches. Drizzle 2 T of honey over the fruit and toss to coat.

Remove hot Dutch Babies from baking cups to small plates. Top with rhubarb sauce and fruit. Sprinkle toasted almonds on top of the fruit and serve immediately.

Rhubarb Sauce

1/2 cup water
2/3 cup sugar
3 cups thinly sliced rhubarb

Bring water and sugar to a boil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the rhubarb, turn heat to low, cover, and simmer until rhubarb is soft, 10 to 15 minutes. Mash and chill in the refrigerator, about one hour.

Wraps and Homemade Tortillas

Wraps are a great lunch on a day off. Kevin helped saute all the vegetables, and we both enjoyed a completely homemade lunch.


The tortilla recipe is originally from Oh She Glows. Somehow her tortillas were a lot rounder. It's a mystery to me how she did that - this one is the roundest of the bunch. We had to make this recipe twice before they came out right. The first time it was way too sticky, and I am not sure what we did wrong, or what changed the second time.

Here is a picture of everything in the wrap - lettuce, chicken, tomatoes, red peppers, cheese, and ranch. Kevin also put hot sauce on his. Next time we will add some black beans, but there weren't any thawed this time.

Does anyone want to volunteer to clean up the kitchen?

Homemade Tortillas

- 2 cups flour (whatever kind you want - we used a mixture of white, wheat, and corn meal)
- 1/2 t salt
- 1/2 t baking soda
- 1 T Olive Oil
- 3/4 cup hot water

Preheat a skillet to medium high heat. In a bowl, mix all ingredients well. You may not need all the water to form a soft ball. Cover and let sit in a warm place for 20 minutes.

Divide into 8 equal parts and let sit, covered, another 20 minutes.

Roll each ball out to a 6- or 7-inch circle shape. . Then take the rolling pin and roll from the center outwards, back and forth a few times as you go around the circle. When it starts to get thinner, take your left hand (if you’re right handed) and turn the tortilla a couple inches. Use your right hand to use the rolling pin (holding in the middle) and roll from the center outwards. Keep turning and rolling until it is paper thin.

Place a tortilla into the skillet and watch until bubbles form. This won’t take long. When the bottom is lightly brown (or there are darker spots), flip over, press down once or twice, and cook for about 30-45 seconds, or until smoke appears.

Cook remaining tortillas, watching carefully, and place on a plate, with wet paper towels in between them. Refrigerate for later or remove the paper towels and freeze.

Carnie Pizza

It started innocently. I sent Jen a link to Japanese pizza. A few months ago we got together for "Lentil Night" and had talked about getting together again to make other healthy recipes. I thought this pizza was hilarious and never expected anything to come of it.

But a few weeks later she said we should make the pizza. She loves cabbage, I love cabbage, and so we dove in head first and set up a time to get together.


Here is Jen looking stunning while she flattens the 'pizza'. I didn't get any pictures of the kitchen, but it is HUGE and she put in the cabinets by herself. She even got the marble slabs from the library remodel, sanded them, and finished them for her counter top. The whole house is a giant art project for them and they are refinishing the entire thing.

Jen made some soy milk to go with dinner. It was shockingly delicious. Apparently, she just soaks the soy beans over night, then puts them in her soy milk maker and out comes a delicious beverage.

Right before dinner was finished, Chuck came home. Rumor has it that he isn't an avid cabbage lover, but he was a great sport and ate his whole piece. We all smell like carnies (which is why we call it Carnie Pizza).

I know that I haven't made it sound appetizing, but that is only for effect. It really was quite tasty. I especially liked the cilantro on it, which really brought out the flavors. Don't think of it as pizza; think of it as a tasty healthy casserole. Sometimes it is hard to find main dish recipes for vegetables, and this is one that I will come back to time and time again.

The kids were playing outside so they completely missed the entire dinner experience.

Carnie Pizza

2 cups cabbage, finely shredded

1 cup leeks, well washed and chopped

2/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/4 t fine grain sea salt

2 eggs, beaten

1 T olive oil

Garnish: toasted slivered almonds, chives/ herbs, Parmesan cheese

Combine the cabbage, leeks, flour, and salt in a bowl. Toss until everything is coated with flour. Stir in the eggs and mix until everything is evenly coated.

Heat a large skillet over medium heat with a spray of olive oil. Scoop the cabbage mixture into the pan, and press it into a round pancake shape. Cook for 4-5 minutes, or until the bottom is golden. To flip it, slide it out of the skillet onto a plate. Place another plate on top and flip both (together) over. If you need a bit more oil in your skillet, add it now, before sliding the pizza back into the skillet. Again press down a bit with a spatula and cook until golden on this side - another 3 -5 minutes.

When it is finished cooking, sprinkle with toasted almonds and chives, and slide it onto a cutting board to cut into wedges. Enjoy immediately.

Johnny Blaze Cakes

We drove on Johnny Cake Road in Apple Valley on our way to a quilt shop with Mom several years ago. She sang us the song:

Come girls, come, and listen to my noise.

Don't you marry the Mormon boys.

If you do, your fortune it will be,

Johnny cakes and babies will be all you'll see.

Here's the thing: I married a Mormon boy. So far I've seen no babies, and this is the first batch of Johnny cakes. Go figure. It may be far batter if there were a few more of both.

The batter is pretty lumpy and thick.

In Vegan Soul Kitchen, where I found this recipe, the Johnny cakes were perfectly round. He said to shape then with a wooden spoon. The results were wildly different when I tried it. It must be my spoon....

They are nice for variety, but I am glad they aren't the only thing besides babies that I have around.

Johnny Blaze Cakes

1 1/2 cups cornmeal

1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour (or all purpose flour)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

2 1/2 cups boiling milk (the original recipe called for unflavored rice milk)

2 jalapenos, seeded and minced

In a large bowl combine the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt, and cayenne. Set aside. Boil the milk in the microwave or in a saucepan. Add the milk to the flour mixture, stirring as you pour. Add the jalapeno and mix well. Refrigerate for 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Grease a large skillet on heat to meduim-high. Add 1/4 cup of batter to the skillet per cake. A large skillet should hold 3-4 cakes.

After about 1 minute, shape each cake with a wooden spoon (hah) so they are 3 inches wide and 1/2 inch thick. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook the cakes for 8-10 minutes per side, adding more oil after turning, until they are golden brown and crispy. Transfer the cooked cakes to the oven to keep the cakes warm until all the cakes are cooked.

Banana Bread

We had a miserable time making banana bread when were first married. We tried fancy recipes but it is hard to get excited about a recipe with 37 ingredients, so finally Kevin broke down and called his mom. She gave him a very simple recipe: tons of butter, two tons of sugar, 4 tons of flour, 2 eggs, and 3 bananas. Now I know why Monica was always so adamant about NOT buttering banana bread.

A month ago I saw a recipe on one of my favorite blogs: A Greener Tea. (Click on the name to go to the site.) You have to check out the recipe on her blog just to see the note her darling kids left for her. What sweet angels. This whole blog is about embracing your age. It is for women 35 and older, but I figure, what the heck, I can't wait until I'm 40 so I qualify in spirit if not yet in age.

This recipe has a bunch of strange ingredients: flax seed, wheat germ, and wheat bran. Hali says that we can't digest flax seed, so don't bother putting it in stuff. Too bad, Hali. Sadly, I only had to improvise on one ingredient. I had no wheat bran, but, on an even more sad note, I did have bran flakes, so I ground those up and used them instead.

It is a sign of a defeated woman to have bran flakes in her food storage. Especially when it is in the section that actually gets used.

Kevin saw some flax in the bottom of the bread loaf pan, and asked if flax was in the banana bread. That is a deal breaker for him. I told him there was some ground flax but the muffins didn't have any whole pieces on the bottom, and you couldn't even taste them. It wasn't good enough - now he won't even try them. Good! Now there's more for me. I'll let you tomorrow if there is too much fiber.....

Isn't this weird? The muffin on the left was the first batch, and I mixed the dry ingredients, then the wet, then folded them together. The one on the right came together by throwing everything into a bowl and mixing it up. The one on the right has noticeably less texture. And I didn't use a blur effect in PhotoShop. I did use some of The Pioneer Woman's PhotoShop actions, but only "Boost" to brighten the image a bit. Both mixing methods taste the same.

** Special Note ** If you are new to the Pioneer Woman, do not look at her Chicken, Bacon and Cheese Sandwich while at work, or you will be accused of looking at food porn. This is especially true if you are salivating over her food right before lunch.

Banana Bread with goofy ingredients
3 bananas, mashed
½ C yogurt
1 t baking soda
1 egg
1 t vanilla
2 T oil
1/2 C dark brown sugar
1 ½ C whole wheat flour
1 t baking powder
¼ C ground flax seed
¼ C wheat germ
¼ C wheat bran

Mix everything together and bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes, or until golden brown.

Mini Cornbread Muffins

The Farmers Wife cookbook claims that the only unforgivable sin is to put sugar in cornbread. But I've known some wives of farmers, and quite frankly, they didn't seem so picky about cornbread. Plus, I like sugar.

Kevin is taking me ice fishing (yay!) tomorrow, so he made another pot of chili to bring onto the lake with us. I decided to make some mini cornbread muffins to go with it. My roommate Catherine gave the recipe to me, and she was an exceptionally good cook. One thing that I haven't experimented with is using honey instead of sugar, but that will be a good next step to get it closer to a food storage recipe.

Using whole wheat flour makes it a slightly brown color instead of bright yellow. That is unfortunate, but they still taste good. Once I tried them with freshly ground corn flour and whole wheat flour. That was a mistake. I pretended to like them, but they were so heavy that it was no longer hedonistic to eat them. And with a cup of butter, don't bother eatin' 'em unless you genuinely like 'em. Nobody else ate more than a bite.

Usually I half the recipe.

Cornbread
1 cup melted butter
1 1/3 cup sugar
2 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups cornmeal
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 can creamed corn

Mix the baking soda and buttermilk. Dump everything else into a big bowl, mix it up, and pour into muffin cups or a 9 X 13 pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 40-45 minutes (if using the big pan.) At the end of the baking time, check to see if the bread is set. If it still jiggles, cut it into squares and continue baking for 10 minutes or so. That will help it bake in the center.

Kamikaze Pancakes

Early in our relationship, Kevin introduced me to The Egg and I, a restaurant in Uptown. I opened the menu and fell madly in love and may never recover. There in black and white were the words I had always fantasized about reading: "Kamikaze Pancakes." They are made with buckwheat flour and bananas, blueberries, and walnuts are baked in. Then they are topped with more bananas, blueberries, and walnuts.

One pancake is the size of the plate and leaves you stuffed. Never being much for moderation, I always get two. Come on now - we only go there once or twice a year, and all things should be taken in moderation, including moderation itself.

Since we sometimes need a kamikaze fix in between visits, I modified an oatmeal pancake recipe to include buckwheat. If you use the 1/4 C spoon to make them they will fit nicely in the toaster the next day.

If you don't have any buckwheat or buckwheat flour, go ahead and use rolled oats instead. If you are missing some fruit or nuts just leave it out or substitute a different kind.

Kevin likes to say, "You eat one," while holding a single finger in the air to illustrate just how dense these are. If you like light fluffy pancakes, don't bother making these. They are hearty and filling. (But really I eat more than one at a time. More like 2 on the first serving, 2 for the second serving, and several bites into the second serving I realize that I might explode if I take one more bite.)

Yum. I can hardly wait to dig in.

Is there even a pancake underneath all this topping?

Kamikaze Pancakes

1/2 C whole wheat (or soft wheat) flour
1/2 C rolled oats
1/2 C buckwheat flour (or more rolled oats)
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
2 T sugar
1/3 C powdered milk
2 eggs
1 C water
2 T oil
1 mashed banana
1/2 C washed blueberries
1/8 C chopped walnuts


Mix all the dry ingredients together. Mix the wet ingredients and beat it a bit with a fork, then mix in the mashed banana. Make a well with the dry ingredients, pour the wet into it and mix until just moistened. Gently fold in the blueberries and walnuts and bake on a hot griddle. Top with more blueberries, banana slices, and walnuts, and also your favorite pancake toppings, such as applesauce or maple syrup.

Poppyseed Cookies

These tiny sandwich cookies are my absolute favorite. They take forever but are so completely charming that one look (or bite) melts all the frustration you had while you were rolling out and cutting a billion little 1 1/2 in cookies.

I brought these to work on my birthday this year, and everyone still talks about them. They are sprinkled with sugar and salt. Nobody expected the salt, so they were thrown off and they didn't like the distinct taste. Of course, I reached out and tenderly told them that the cookies do require a sophisticated taste and some people just aren't refined enough to enjoy such an adult pleasure. Needless to say, "Megan's Cookies" carries mixed connotations.

If you are looking for flaky salt, Trader Joe's is a great source. Or, you can just use fine grained sea salt.


It is easier to sprinkle the sugar if you use a mini strainer.

When you are rolling them out, it is easiest to do it between two pieces of saran wrap. The dough stuck to the counter, and it also stuck to the silicone baking sheet. And I hollered in frustration. Keep it simple and just stick to the plastic wrap.


This time, I made half of the cookies with sugar and salt on top, and half with just sugar. The ones that have flaky salt on them are the ones I sandwiched with chocolate. Yum-O-Licious. Here the fabulous, golden brown cookies. Oh, dear. I think I may have died and gone to heaven. I really didn't expect to get here.....now I don't know what to do with myself.

The ones with just sugar are just going to stay as they are. Mostly because when I was rolling out the cookies I looked at the clock and cried to see it was taking so long for so few cookies. Then I cried again when I was finished sandwiching the salty ones because then there were only half as many cookies. It was too much to bear, and this way they look more plentiful

This is my favorite one. Where is my heart? Oh yeah - Kevin has it.

Turkey Noodle Soup

What do you do with the leftover turkey? Make soup, of course!

Sometimes noodle recipes call for salt, but I don't like to knead noodle dough with salt because it cuts into my hands. Salt the water instead. Also, the standard is to use 1 egg for each person, but I think that is too much. 1/2 egg is more like it. It really isn't an exact science - you can have wildly different ratios of eggs to flour and they will still be perfect.

The noodle sheet should be smooth and elastic - but it doesn't have to be perfectly square.

When the noodles come out, just put them on a dowel and let 'em hang while you finish the rest of the noodles.

Here they are - hanging around and waiting for you to use them. The best thing about fresh noodles is how tender and fluffy they are.

Turkey Noodle Soup

2 carrots, diced

3 stalks celery, diced

3 T food storage onions

1-2 C turkey

2 T chicken broth

sea salt

noodles made from 2 eggs

Cover the turkey carcass in water and boil a couple of hours. Strain and put everything except the noodles into the turkey water and cook on low. Make the noodles while the veges cook. Turn up the heat and let it come to a boil right before you finish the noodles. Add the noodles and boil 3-5 minutes until they are tender.

Noodles

2 eggs

2 T water

2-3 C whole wheat pastry flour, whole wheat flour, or all purpose flour

Beat the eggs lightly with the water and mix with 1-2 cups of flour. Knead lightly, adding more flour until it creates a firm ball. Press it into a flat disk and run it through the noodle maker. Keep folding the noodle sheet and running it through, creating thinner sheets until it is smooth and elastic and fairly thin. I usually stop at setting #4. Then run it through the fat noodle cutter. If you don't have a noodle maker, come to my house and make them, or roll out the dough and cut it into 1/4 inch strips with a butter knife.

Bi-Polar Pancakes

These pancakes are sometimes called German Pancakes, and sometimes called Pop-Up Pancakes. They do go up when they are in the oven, but as soon as they come out they go down. WAY down. You could say they get as flat as a pancake. Maybe they need some medication so their mood can be more stable.

I liked them in a muffin pan and in oven safe cups. Just remind me next time that even though the cups have a handle, it isn't the proper place to grab if it just came out of the oven....

Here they are, ready to go into the oven.

And here they are right after they came out. I had to open the oven door and snap the picture because they fell so fast that I would miss it if I took the time to take the pan out of the oven first. They have already gone down quite a bit.

Bi Polar Pancakes

1 cup milk
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour (or all purpose flour)
6 eggs
1/4 cup melted butter
dash salt

Blend everything with a stick blender and pour into cups, muffin tins, or a 9 X 13 pan. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.

Banananana Muffins

The goal for today was to make something with pastry flour. Jeffrey was kind enough to give me a whole lotta' soft wheat (which becomes whole wheat pastry flour when ground) a couple of weeks ago, and I have been studiously putting off making anything with it.

BUT NO MORE.

Looking back at the original recipe, I made some pretty wild deviations. Here is the original. These muffins are incredibly moist, especially when you consider that there is no butter or oil. Feel free to cut back on the sugar a bit, and you don't need quite so much baking powder.

If you don't have any soft wheat or whole wheat pastry flour, go ahead and use regular whole wheat flour. Or, if Armageddon is upon us, use white flour. (Just don't tell me about it.)

Grandma Grabbert put a poem into the Burlington cookbook about following the recipe:

I didn't have potatoes, so I substituted rice.

I didn't have paprika, so I used another spice.

I didn't have tomato sauce, so I used tomato paste.

A whole can, not half; I don't believe in waste.

My friend gave me this recipe, she said you couldn't beat it.
There must have been SOMETHING wrong with it, I couldn't eat it.

So there ya have it. Not all substitutions turn out as good as these muffins. Usually (I swear it's true) I try the recipe exactly as it is the first time, so I don't end up writing off too many recipes because of my wild ideas on how to improve them before I even make it one time. But, seriously, the original recipe had an ingredient list 4 pages long. I wasn't going to embark on such a crazy adventure. So I shortened it by combining similar ingredients.

Banana Muffins

1 1/4 C whole wheat pastry flour

1 C rolled oats

1 T baking powder

1/2 t salt

3/4 C yogurt

1/4 C applesauce

1/2 C maple syrup

1 egg

1 t vanilla

2 large bananas, mashed

1/4 C chopped pecans

Mix dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl. Mix wet ingredients together in a small bowl. Make a well with the dry ingredients and pour the wet bowl into it. Fold until barely combined and spoon into muffin cups. Sprinkle with chopped pecans. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes.