With the kids home all day, there’s always someone asking for something to eat and while I have so many ideas of things to make, ds12 has dietary restrictions that are very limiting. It’s not fair to make foods that he can’t eat and then expect him to decline them when he sees everyone enjoying them. But it takes a lot of the pleasure out of cooking for me when I have so so few base ingredients to use. I like cooking and baking.
I decided I need to redraw the lines of what I will and won’t make for the summer, and that will mean loosening the boundaries for ds12.
Our foundation will continue to be high in animal proteins and have no processed foods. Though there are so many fun alternative grains to bake with, I’m choosing to limit them to infrequent appearances. I’ll include beans, potatoes and sweet potatoes regularly, and use more nuts and seeds for baking.
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In preparation for a couple of meals planned for this week, a couple of days ago I soaked a big pan full of white beans, and another pan full of mung beans.
After soaking for a day, I drained and rinsed them, then let them sit out for another day to start the sprouting process. Soaking and sprouting beans minimizes leptins, decreases digestive discomfort, and increases the nutritional benefit.
I used the mung beans to make what were supposed to be wraps but were more like flat breads. The recipe is a simple concept – blend up the soaked mung beans with some water and a drop of salt, then fry them like a large pancake. (You can do something similar with soaked lentils.) I served them with tuna salad, and the kids liked them a lot so it was a successful experiment. I didn’t taste them but one of my teens said they’re perfect with filling but bland eaten on their own. I’ll experiment with adding seasonings next time, which will be in the next couple of days since I still have a large amount of batter waiting to be used. I’m thinking they could be used for enchiladas, burritos, and lasagna, so there are a number of potential ways to use them.
I cooked all of the white beans on a very low flame overnight, so when I woke up they were ready to use. I made chicken chili for dinner, using chicken breasts that I canned in 2022 (I canned so much meat and chicken in 2022!! ).
Since I only used six cups of beans for dinner and I had cooked a big pot full, I decided I’d can the remaining beans as baked beans. Every time I can something I’m doing something my future self thanks me for because it makes that future meal easier.
I pulled up a baked bean recipe that called for barbeque sauce and mustard, neither of which I had in the house. For a moment I thought about reconsidering my intentions, then then realized there wouldn’t be any need to change plans, since I have ingredients and the willingness to cook from scratch.
So often we don’t realize how many items we’re accustomed to purchasing in the store can be made quickly, easily and resulting in a much higher quality product – right in your own kitchen. And of course it saves you money as well!
I had never made mustard until tonight, but it was quite simple. I buy mustard seeds to use for pickling, so I blended some into a powder, mixed in vinegar, salt, tumeric, garlic powder and paprika, then cooked the mixture until it thickened. Voila, mustard!
I then prepared a recipe of barbeque sauce, which was tomato paste, vinegar, water, (brown sugar but I left it out since the tomato paste has sugar added – very annoying but that’s how it’s sold here and for this recipe it evened out), soy sauce, mustard, garlic powder, cumin, onion powder and smoked paprika. It tasted great.
I mixed the barbeque sauce into the beans, then filled up jars until the pot of beans was empty. I popped the five liters of baked beans into the pressure canner, and I’m writing this while waiting for them to finish processing.
I also have a pan of potatoes baking in the oven for tomorrow’s lunch menu, which will feature double baked potatoes. Dinner will be sweet potato chicken casserole, and I’ll use canned chicken to prepare that. Knowing today what I’ll be serving tomorrow makes tomorrow an easier day.
Avivah
PS – I’m going to add this note to the next few messages until readers get used to the new format here. In this format, you can’t see any comments from the main page. To comment and/or read the comments, you’ll need to click on the post and then scroll all the way down.
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