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Chai-Spiced Pear Oats

November 16, 2015January 1, 2016by Rebecca3 Comments

Several years ago, I stayed with a few girlfriends at a B&B run by Agnes, who lives on a farm off the western edge of Ireland. From the moment we arrived we were fed quite well, including dinner, which was fresh caught from the ocean by her son. We had a proper Irish breakfast the next morning with the traditional white and black puddings, fried tomato and egg, thick slabs of brown bread, muesli, yogurt, and then pots of tea. After I was stuffed as could be, I slipped into the kitchen to ask Agnes a question. She was just tidying up and there, sitting at a tiny table away from the guests, was her farmer husband in his wool socks, tucking into a homely and simple bowl of porridge.

I immediately wished I could take all of my breakfast back, forget my friends, and sit at the table with him eating homely oats and chatting about the first frost date, how much rain we’ve received, the work that needs done before the storm, and other farmer things.

If ever I fed people food for a living instead of words and ideas, I would feed them porridge.

It is the meal I most closely associate with the term comfort food, and the one I’ll gladly eat any time of day but especially at the end of a long and discouraging one. It is the breakfast I always hope is fed to me when I stay at a friend or relative’s house, and at home in my own kitchen, it is the one I love to change throughout the seasons with all variations of grains, fruits, and flavors. I’m especially partial to thick-rolled oats but lately I’ve also been experimenting with various ratios of amaranth, quinoa, buckwheat, and polenta.

And then I always seem to return to oats. Perhaps this is because I grew up on its simplicity and homeliness, eating it slowly on nearly frosty mornings at the same table I have now, as I listened to my dad talk about the weather and other farmer things in his wool socks.

Chai-Spiced Pear Oats, serves 2 Continue reading “Chai-Spiced Pear Oats” →

Autumn

Sprouted Buckwheat Granola

October 22, 2015October 21, 2015by Rebecca3 Comments

I listened to a disgruntled parent on the phone yesterday. Because she was disgruntled about something completely unrelated to me, she was quite open with the details of her discontent.

I listened to a couple teachers rant last week. In what started as a discussion of what I could do for their students, our meeting soon became what I could do for them in that moment, to be a good ear.

I listen to students in my high school group share their insecurities almost every Wednesday and Friday. Their fears and self-doubts are usually thrown into the middle of sentences so subtly that if I weren’t paying close attention, I might miss them.

When I was teaching, I regularly had students come into my classroom to sit and talk at me before or after school, to share their tough lives beyond the school walls, to ask me personal questions that I wanted to feel comfortable enough to answer sincerely because I knew they needed an adult to look up to and have their back.

These are not isolated incidents. From day to day, I listen to people share feelings of frustration, of isolation, of shame. Certainly, not everything I listen to is negative. I hear plenty of good experiences and fun stories too. But I hear the tough ones more loudly. Sometimes in those circumstances, I offer my input. More often, I prefer to listen or ask a question or two to keep from having the conversation come back on me, to swirl back around to how I am doing.

I remember growing up that it was often stated to me, no one likes a complainer. No one wants to hear the negativity. And I think that is true. But we also need someone to hear us, especially on the days that don’t go so well. In my own home, I’m often told that I’m not a good listener. I cringe each time I hear that statement and I immediatly wonder how, if I’m so terrible at listening to the one that loves and knows me best, can anyone else feel like I’m good enough to confide in?

We so often want to shut out the negativity, to cut off the complainers mid-vent because we know just how to fix their crazy, mental, nutty lives. I am a complete victim of this in my own home. I flap my wings all over William’s sharing like a distraught mother bird and I manage to cut him off mid-sentence repeatedly with unhelpful questions because if I’m busy focusing on fixing him there is less room in my crazy brain to focus on what is wrong with me.

When I take a step back and give myself a break, just as I so often give everyone else one, I realize we are all just trying to figure out how to live and be and manage ourselves in this experience we’re given. And many of us are struggling daily through life’s heap to peel back enough layers—in a conversation, in a relationship, in ourselves—to find the voice that is ours.

Each one of us has one. Each voice is distinct and has something to say. Each voice deserves to be heard. But it requires the act of listening.

– Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds

Sprouted Buckwheat Granola

Chalk it up to roots that run real deep to the British Isles, but I’m in the habit of enjoying teatime around 4pm as often as possible, complete with a hot cuppa and snacks, and all the better if there is good company and conversation to be had. Growing up, I always ate a bowl of cereal as a snack on days I came home right after school. To this day, I favor crunchy cereals and fruit rather than the traditional mid-afternoon sweets. Today just happens to be National Nut Day. I’m not acutally sure if the day is meant to celebrate all the nutters like me, or if its more of a day to enjoy eating nuts, but the Recipe Redux is celebrating with a nutty theme this month. So it was timely that my garden-neighbor handed me a big box of fresh-off-his-tree walnuts last week. I contemplated making all sorts of elaborate walnut concoctions. But then it was teatime and I was out of crunchy cereal. So I made granola.

This sprouted buckwheat granola is inspired by a completely raw, sprouted one that I purchase in tiny amounts at my local co-op as a treat. Sprouting seeds, nuts, and grains helps them to release enzyme inhibitors which make them more difficult to digest their beneficial nutrients and makes them more nutritious to eat. Making sprouted granola in a food dehydrator is the best way to make sure those released nutrients are still around in the final product. I do not have a food dehydrator though so I baked my batch in the oven at the lowest possible setting overnight. If you want to add a little honey or maple syrup in the mixing process to sweeten this up a touch more, go ahead. I find the applesauce and raisins to be lightly sweet enough.

2 cups raw buckwheat groats

2 cups puffed millet

1 cup raw walnuts

1 cup raw pumpkin seeds

3/4 cup applesauce

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup raisins

Soak the buckwheat in a large dish for 6-8 hours or overnight. Drain and rinse well until the water runs clear and all the slime is gone. Drain thoroughly. Return the buckwheat to a large jar and cover with cheesecloth, a thin towel, or paper towel, and set upside down. Rinse at least twice per day until it just starts sprouting, about 1-2 days. Meanwhile, soak the nuts and the seeds in a jar for 4-6 hours. Rinse and drain them thoroughly.
On a large baking pan, pour out and mix the slightly sprouted buckwheat, soaked and rinsed walnuts and pumpkin seeds along with the remaining ingredients, except for the raisins.
Set the pan in the oven at the lowest possible temperature setting and allow to dry overnight for 6-8 hours. Remove from the oven, cool to room temperature, and then stir in the raisins.

Autumn, Summertime

resourceful hands, all-the-greens interchangeable pesto

September 21, 2015May 29, 2017by Rebecca9 Comments

I vividly remember mornings at my grandparents in the north, my dad’s parents, who we visited less regularly growing up. Specifically, I remember mashed-potato cakes in the morning for breakfast, their perfect fluffy rounds composed of leftover mash from the night before. There was something special about the resourcefulness of meals at my grandparents–how my dad and grandpa had trout on summer mornings, freshly caught in a pre-breakfast fishing trip to the creek, how the milk and eggs came from their cow and chickens, and how my grandma’s large garden to the back of the house sustained them long past their garden season.

In those days, we ate fairly similarly at home. But I had more respect for the ingredients that went into meals at my grandparents–even when I still hated the milk, refused to go near the trout, and was just as picky an eater there as at home.

Though I may not have wanted to partake in some of the foods that made up my grandparents’ lifestyle, in that pre-teen phase of wonderment, I loved sitting in the corner chair at the tiny table tucked into the kitchen, watching my grandma turn random assortments into a meal, listening to my grandpa spin yarns about his neighbors, his fingers cozied around his coffee cup, my dad nodding along.

In those early years before computers or smartphones or big screens to numb the mind and overwhelm the senses, I learned the art of quiet observation in small corners of rooms with the adults. In those rooms, where there is nary a sibling or cousin or similarly-aged friend in my memory, I watched, listened, and learned. I have always been fascinated by hands and it is the hands that I vividly remember, making it all happen. Hands flipping the potato cakes in the frying pan, the grease popping and squeaking. The hands swirling and lifting the coffee cup and setting it down again. The hands bringing in the basket of just-gathered eggs. The hands that helped mine push the creaky old elevator button leading to the farmhouse basement for another jar of jam. In observing those wiser hands throughout those early years, I like to think I learned to appreciate resourcefulness, of using what was had, and turning near-waste into something worth having.

I am not so naïve as to think the resourceful way of life practiced by my grandparents and parents then was born out of an extreme desire for some romantic farmy lifestyle. It was a way of life because it was what they knew, it was what they had, and it was how they (and we) survived economically.

William and I mutually agreed to forego gifting each other at many holidays over these past few years and we had to gently explain to friends and relatives why we were not willing to purchase certain items that might have seemed basic. But we didn’t scrap on our willingness to really pay the people who engage in the hardest of hand work to feed us. I am more willing to spend on food than these people I learned from, but I still hold tightly to their lessons on resourcefulness. I choose more expensive produce without complaint–but I damn well better try to use the whole vegetable. I like to think this comes as a result of all those quiet, watchful learnings growing up until it has become simply what I do–and every item we throw away goes somewhere.

When faced with carrot tops, radish or turnip greens, and other random herbs, I’ve spent the last few years finding ways to make them useful. My mom and grandma have chickens to eat their vegetable scraps. I have an ancient–but still working–food processor.

And that is how freezer-containers full of eclectic pesto combinations happened.

All-the-Greens Interchangeable Pesto, adapted from Gena Hamshaw

The Recipe Redux theme this month is freezer meals. Whenever I have more greens or herbs than I know what to do with, I turn them into pesto and toss the container in the freezer. This recipe is one of my favorites because it is so versatile and I can make it using whatever I have. It also makes for a simple and quick meal. Our standard busy day go-to is spaghetti with pesto, but I’ve swirled it into grain bowls, spooned it atop toasts and pizza crusts, and even thinned it out to make a quick and tasty dressing for green salad. Try a few different combinations. Use up those herbs and greens.

2 cups tightly packed greens (radish/kale/parsley/cilantro/basil/mint/turnip/etc.)
1/2 cup nuts or seeds, toasted
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast (large flake) or 2 tsp. powder
ground black pepper, smoked paprika, or red pepper flakes, to taste

Place the greens, nuts or seeds, and garlic in a food processor. Pulse to combine until the mixture becomes a rough paste.
Turn the motor on and drizzle in the olive oil and water. Add the salt, lemon juice, and nutritional yeast, and pulse a few more times to combine.
Add the optional spices to give it a different flavor spin.

My favorite combinations thus far:

Carrot Tops, Sunflower Seeds + Smoked Paprika
Basil + Pumpkin Seeds
Radish Greens + Almonds
Mint, Cashews + Green Chile
Cilantro + Radish or Turnip Greens, Pumpkin Seeds, Cumin, Coriander, Red Pepper Flakes + Lime