First – there is nothing wrong with doing a riff on something they already like. It takes a pretty sophisticated palate to like fish such as haddock or cod right out of the chute. “Mildly flavored’ doesn’t even begin to describe the way kids feel about it in its unadorned state; that’s why breaded, deep fried fish is so popular with kids (Mickey D’s has built an entire industry around those sandwiches): that breading and the grease from the deep frying give kids a stronger taste that they recognize and accept easily. But there are other tastes that kids recognize and that you can use to your advantage with fish that is frankly bland:

Italian Food: If your kids like anything with tomato sauce and cheese on it, don’t be afraid to bake fish such as haddock and cod with the same treatment. Or, if you want to go completely sophisticated, chop up veggies and tomatoes, add the appropriate spices (basil and oregano for Italian; cilantro, garlic and chili for Mexican) and bake in a 350 degree oven until done and if there is cheese, it’s all bubbly.

Chinese Food. If your kids like Chinese or Asian of any sort, tonight’s recipe is for you. Frankly, it’s an idea I cribbed from the fish display at my local Wegmans where they’d taken strips of fish filet and stuffed it and baked it. Now, I certainly don’t have crab meat laying around the fridge at Chez Siberia, but I had some other stuff and my son raved about this so much, he asked for seconds and then tonight asked for me to make it again, a sure sign that it’s a keeper.

Chinese Mushroom-stuffed Fish
Ingredients:
Fish: filets of totally bland tasting white fish such as haddock or cod, cut into 1” thick strips, with no skin.
Filling:
Mushrooms – whatever you’ve got, chopped really fine. 3-4 ounces of mushrooms chopped fine will fill up 6-8 of these little fish donuts.
Ginger – I used sushi ginger from the jar, but grated fresh ginger will do as well – see the photo for the relative size of the piles of ginger and mushrooms you will need.
Binder – I used Thai peanut sauce, but whatever Asian sauce, Asian salad dressing or whatever will do – use enough so that the mushrooms and ginger will stick together.
Mix all the filling ingredients together.

Grease a baking sheet and taking the strips of fish, make circles with them on the baking pan. Fill with the mushroom filling and bake in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes or until done (don’t let the fish get dry).

Serve with Chinese stir fried veggies and either rice or noodles.

For more strongly flavored fish, I saw another really clever trick at the same store: This will work with fish that comes in steaks. Cut into big chunks, marinate in spiedie sauce (if you can find it in your area – it will be in the same area as the salad dressings and the bbq sauces) or some sort of bbq sauce such as Mexican. Put on skewers with veggies and grill. Serve with a salad, pasta or if you want to go totally ‘old school’, Italian bread for a fish spiedie sandwich. We had these once and they were fantastic – got a big thumbs up from everyone at the table.

Aunt Toby has written about eggs before, especially with regard to our little flock of Light Brahma chickens (and they are doing very nicely these days, thank you very much).Egg0sactly What We Were Looking For But, let’s review:

One large egg contains:
Calories: 68
Protein: 5.54 gr.
Carbohydrate: .49 gr.
Fat: 4.67 gr; 1.44 gr of which is saturated
Cholesterol: 186.56 gr.

Also contains:
Vitamin A
Vitamin B1, B2, B3, B6, B12
Biotin
Vitamin D
Vitamin E
Folate
Pantothenic Acid

Minerals, including 16% of the TDA of Iodine and 20% of the RDA of Selenium

So, one whole egg plus an egg white and you are covered in terms of protein on a per person basis. So, if you are making something such as scrambled eggs for a group of people, you can do everyone a favor and use whites for half of the servings and add a few extra whites to make up the difference in the volume lost by the lack of yolks.

I think everyone knows what quick and easy meals eggs can produce. Anyone arriving home from work, not having taken anything out in the morning (which has, cough, been known to happen on more than one occasion at Chez Siberia, I assure you), is still assured of a good, hearty, thrifty meal as long as there are eggs in the fridge.

Absolutely first rule in terms of serving eggs: Don’t turn the stove on high and just throw them in the pan. The protein in eggs responds better to low to medium heat. Second rule: Serve them on heated plates. I know that people think this is rather hoity-toity UK behavior but believe me – hot food stays hot longer if it is put on a hot plate. If you have to put a hot pad on the table so that you can put a heated plate on it, so be it (and treat yourself to some cork mats – Ikea has nice cheap ones). There is nothing worse than cold eggs. Not worth eating.

Easy Dinner 1: Think breakfast, only much nicer
Scrambled eggs with cheese
Whole Grain toast or some other form of bread product
Fruit Salad
Easy Dinner 2: Feel French without the flipping
Julia Child had her moment in the kitchen with an omelet; at Chez Siberia, we don’t take chances.
Count up how many people you have (for each person figure one whole egg and one egg white) and crack that many eggs and egg whites into a bowl and beat them well. Save the yolks and cook them up for your pets (they will love them)
Dice finely a small onion and half a pepper, sauté in a little bit of olive oil in a large frying pan that has a lid.
Shred up one half cup of cheddar cheese.
When the veggies are soft, pour the beaten eggs over the veggies and sprinkle the cheese on top. Stir lightly, cover and lower the heat until set.
Serve with whatever accompaniments you would like – ON A HOT PLATE.

This is a great way to use up already cooked and left over veggies such as broccoli, green beans and so on.

Easy Dinner 3: More French Stuff – Quiche Me Quick
What we’re doing here is frankly taking scrambled eggs and combining them with milk and flour as a binder and then baking it (along with some additions) in a crust. If you don’t ‘do’ crusts (and Aunt Toby is not a dab hand at crust making herself – I think this is genetic and is due to my having hot hands), there is nothing wrong with having crusts from the store in the freezer.

Put the crust in its pie plate in a 350 degree oven for ten minutes to start cooking. While it’s doing its thing, combine:

4 ounces of grated hard cheese (cheddar, Swiss, etc.)
2 tablespoons of butter melted
4 whole eggs plus 2 egg whites, beaten
One small onion, chopped
½ cup of all purpose flour
1.5 cups of milk

After 10 minutes in the oven, pull out the crust and pour in the combined ingredients and put back into the oven for 35 minutes until set. Slice and serve – ON A HOT PLATE.

And finally, totally decadent and for when you have had a supremely awful day at work:
Put plates into the oven, on top of the toaster oven or however you get your plates hot.
Beat up one whole egg and one egg white per person
Reach into your fridge and take out that jar of preserves that you got for Christmas from the visiting relatives .
Melt some butter in a large frying pan (or light olive oil – the sort that says, “for sautéing” on it) and when hot, pour in the eggs.
Do NOT stir around. Coat the entire bottom of the pan and allow to set. When it is just set (not wet on the top at all), using a scraper (the silicone ones are especially good for this), carefully nudge this out onto (you knew this was coming, right?), a HOT PLATE.
Put a big honkin’ scoop of preserves on it, fold it up.
Eat very, very slowly……

We love black beans at Chez Siberia because…they taste great all by themselves but you can dress them up with all sorts of spices and then they taste..greater. Your dear Aunty was introduced to them by the DH because part of his family hales from Central America, where the black bean has a focal point in the cuisine. All dried beans can, with the addition of a whole grain, become ‘complete protein’ and with a little bit of clever nutritional legerdemain, black beans can be everything from soup to nuts. We always have at least a half dozen cans of black beans on the shelf because they can be turned into good, cheap stick to your ribs hearty meals – fast, fast, fast.

Basic Black Bean Stuff – can be used all by themselves as a side dish, fillings for tortillas, dips, etc.
One can of canned black beans, rinsed
Olive oil
2 big cloves of garlic, chopped fine.
1 onion small fist size, diced fine.
Chile powder – start with a teaspoon and work up from there if you like things spicy

In a big frying pan, put in a couple of table spoons of oil and put on a low light with the chopped onions and garlic. Cover and stir, cooking until soft.

Add rinsed black beans, stir around and put back on the lid.
If what you want is a side dish, stop here.

If you want a dip, at this point:
Take a potato masher, large fork and some muscle and start to mash them in the pan.
Add water (1/3 to ½ cup should do the trick for one can) and keep mashing until you get the consistency you want. If you want to up the protein (and yes, it also ups the fat too, but), add up to a ½ cup of grated sharp cheese and stir until it’s melted.

If you want filling for tortillas:
Mash up half the beans, add a little water and stir in the rest of the beans.
You might want to add more chili powder and perhaps some chilantro
Fill tortillas with the bean filling, grated cheese (we like cheddar), sautéed onions and peppers.

If you want to do enchiladas:
Do filling for tortillas, line up in a baking dish. Cover with:
Enchilada sauce (commercial or make your own here Easy Enchilada Sauce) or
1 large can of crushed tomatoes either by itself or combined with any or all of the a couple of teaspoons of the following: chili powder, cumin, chilantro, oregano.

Sprinkle more grated cheese on the top and back for 30 min. at 375 degrees.

And here’s the surprise:
Believe it or not, black beans can be used in desserts too. When I was thinking about this, I remembered having Japanese sweets made with what they called ‘red bean paste’ and wondered if black beans had been used for desserts. I have not tried this but the reviewer said it was awesome. Not that I am of the ‘add dried protein to all the sweets to rationalize eating them’ group (actually Aunt Toby’s mom, The Grandma, used to do this and was the queen of adding things like dried milk and soy flour to baked goods. The whole ‘Cornell Bread Book’ movement is based on the position that there are certain people on this earth who are going to eat nothing but baked goods no matter what you do, so you might as well make sure that there is some protein in it. The only problem with this position is this: there is a certain point where the ‘beany-ness’ takes over, so a light hand is advised), but making something that carries the additional benefits of higher fiber, high protein, vitamins, minerals, and anti-inflammatory chemicals is, as Martha Whatshername says, ‘a good thing’.

Amazing Black Bean Brownies (courtesy of Black Bean Brownies)

(this is Aunt Toby here – Before you get started with this, take a look at this recipe – there is NO flour of any sort in this. They are depending on three things to hold this stuff together: cooked black beans, a granulated coffee substitute or dried instant coffee and chopped up walnuts, bound together with eggs. If you don’t have or don’t want to use coffee or coffee substitute, you will need another dried substance to take up the slack here – it’s only ¼ cup so you could use anything from various flours, bran, etc. The other thing is that if you don’t have/want to use nectar or honey, you have a liquid issue. You can use a dry substance such as sugar to sweeten with, but you will need to put liquid back in. I’ll experiment and report back)

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 cup unsalted butter
2 cups soft-cooked black beans, drained well (reviewers note: canned is fine – I’d rinse them well)
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
¼ cup (granulated) natural coffee substitute (or dried instant coffee, for gluten sensitive)
¼ teaspoon sea salt
4 large eggs
1½ cups light agave nectar – you can substitute honey 1 for 1 with this. If you choose honey, use something like clover which basically doesn’t have a strong flavor.
Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line an 11- by 18-inch (rimmed) baking pan (hs note: or jellyroll pan) with parchment paper and lightly oil with canola oil spray.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a glass bowl in the microwave for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes on high. Stir with a spoon to melt the chocolate completely. Place the beans, 1/2 cup of the walnuts, the vanilla extract, and a couple of spoonfuls of the melted chocolate mixture into the bowl of a food processor. Blend about 2 minutes, or until smooth. The batter should be thick and the beans smooth. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the remaining 1/2 cup walnuts, remaining melted chocolate mixture, coffee substitute, and salt. Mix well and set aside.

In a separate bowl, with an electric mixer beat the eggs until light and creamy, about 1 minute. Add the agave nectar and beat well. Set aside.

Add the bean/chocolate mixture to the coffee/chocolate mixture. Stir until blended well.

Add the egg mixture, reserving about 1/2 cup. Mix well. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Using an electric mixer, beat the remaining 1/2 cup egg mixture until light and fluffy. Drizzle over the brownie batter. Use a wooden toothpick to pull the egg mixture through the batter, creating a marbled effect. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until the brownies are set. Let cool in the pan completely before cutting into squares. (They will be soft until refrigerated.)
Makes 45 (2-inch) brownies.

We’ve already seen ricotta take its place in deserts and baked goods.Ricotta Cookies and Crepes Three Ways
Today in honor of ‘Not Thanksgiving” ( in that there is absolutely nothing about this recipe that has turkey, stuffing, squash, sweet potatoes, etc. in it), here is a lovely white pizza with broccoli. Light, non-greasy, filling. Yum.

White Pizza with Broccoli – you will need three kinds of cheese: Romano or Parmesan, Mozarella (a small block about 2×2x1 each) and Ricotta (2 cups)

Pizza Dough:
1 package of dry yeast, dissolved in 1.5 cups of hot water with 1 teaspoon of sugar. Put into a warm oven (turn off the pilot) for 10-15 min. until the mixture is bubbly and smells like..yeast.

Put into a big bowl with a couple of cups of flour (if you are including whole wheat, put in 1.5 cups of regular flour first and mix well, and use the whole wheat at the end to absorb the extra moisture.

Put a handful of flour on the counter (clean the counter first) and empty the bowl onto of it. Turn to coat the dough with the flour and knead until the dough is smooth, elastic and starts to have little blisters on the surface.

Place in a greased bowl, turn over, cover with a towel and put into the oven to raise for 45 min. to one hour.

While you are waiting for the dough to raise, cut up and sauté any of the following, singly or in combination:
Green or red peppers
Onions
Garlic

Also, cut broccoli (you will need a small head for a whole pie) into small florets, boil up briefly and drain.
Shred up enough of the following to make 2-3 cups:
Parmesan or Romano cheese
Mozzarella

Once the dough has risen. Take it out, punch it down and knead it a bit again. Set the oven for 400 degrees. Grease either a cookie sheet or a pizza pan and press the dough out into it to cover. Cover the dough with the ricotta. Grind black pepper on it and sprinkle oregano and basil on it. Put on the broccoli and other veggies and sprinkle the Mozzarella and parmesan or Romano cover.

Put the pan into the oven and bake until the cheese is all melted and bubbly and the dough is crispy – this should take 15-20 minutes. Serve with a green salad.

Enjoy!

Something Aunt Toby discovered recently (and the world of food is just filled to bursting with new discoveries) is that nuts are really really good. And if you compare them with other stuff that people eat on a regular basis as sources of protein, they start to really shine in terms of what they can do for you. Ounce for ounce, nuts are standouts in terms of vitamins, minerals, and types of fats that they have. In many cases, they can be substituted ounce for ounce for animal products such as cheese and meat. For example, looking at 1 ounce of these items and just examining protein and fat:

Cheddar Cheese: 113 cal., 9 gr. Fat, 7 gr. Protein
Chicken Breast (commercially raised): 55 cal., 1 gr. Fat, 8.78 gr. Protein
Walnuts: 183 cal., 18 gr. Fat, 4 gr. Protein
Almonds: 167 cal, 15 gr. Fat, 6 gr. Protein
Cashews: 161 cal., 13 gr. Fat, 4 gr. Protein

I know some of you are falling on your fainting couches already, “Oh, Aunt Toby..how could you..look at ‘teh fat’…OMG!!!”

Stick a hanky under your nose with a bit of lavender water on it and listen up – more and more medical research is showing that fat is actually good for you and some kinds are even better for you:

“Research published in the British Journal of Nutrition (Blomhoff R, Carlsen MH), which identified several nuts among plant foods with the highest total antioxidant content, suggests nut’s high antioxidant content may be key to their cardio-protective effects.
Walnuts, pecans and chestnuts have the highest antioxidant content of the tree nuts, with walnuts delivering more than 20 mmol antioxidants per 3 ounces (100 grams). Peanuts (although technically, a legume) also contribute significantly to our dietary intake of antioxidants.
Nuts’ high antioxidant content helps explain results seen in the Iowa Women’s Health Study in which risk of death from cardiovascular and coronary heart diseases showed strong and consistent reductions with increasing nut/peanut butter consumption. Total death rates decreased 11% and 19% for nut/peanut butter intake once per week and 1-4 times per week, respectively.
…In addition to lowering LDL cholesterol, the walnut-rich ALA diet:
• lowered levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation strongly associated with atherosclerosis and heart disease
• increased levels of the protective omega-3 fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), and
• decreased levels of ICAM-1 and VCAM-1 and E-selection, all of which are involved in cholesterol’s adhesion to the endothelium (the lining of the arteries).
The goodness of nuts

So, where are all these antioxidant goodies found? Ahem – the fat, which in the case of nuts, tends to be unsaturated, or monosaturated.

For a detailed look at nutrition of Walnuts: Walnuts

Almonds:Almonds
Health benefits of Almonds

Cashews: Something truly fascinating and totally different for cashews vs. other tree nuts is this: Not only do cashews have a lower fat content than most other nuts, approximately 75% of their fat is unsaturated fatty acids, plus about 75% of this unsaturated fatty acid content is oleic acid, the same heart-healthy monounsaturated fat found in olive oil. Cashew Overview
Cashew Profile

A chart comparing all sorts of nuts plus peanuts can be found here: Nuts and Peanuts Compared

Another site, which has even more information (actually, so much information that it’s a little bit dizzying, but still, any site that slices, dices, graphs, builds pyramids and analyzes food in such a detailed way is great) is here Nutrition Data Site

So, if you are looking for some protein to substitute for high saturated fat cheeses or meats, or protein which has omega 3s coming along for the ride, nuts are something that should be considered. (OK, I will also admit that it is easy to rationalize eating things like oatmeal cookies that have nuts in them, or carrot cake with nuts in it, or brownies with cream cheese filling with almonds on top from the ‘the nuts are good for me’ standpoint – we can talk about delusions later)

But, from an easy-to-remember standpoint, in rank order:

Highest Protein per Ounce: Peanuts, Pistachios, Almonds, Walnuts
Highest Phytosterols: Peanuts and Pistachios, Cashews, Pinenuts, Macadamias
Highest Monosaturated Fats: Macadamias, Hazelnuts, Pecans, Cashews
Highest Polyunsaturated Fats: Walnuts, Pinenuts, Pecans
Lowest Calories: Pistachios, Peanuts, Cashews, Almonds

Don’t be afraid of nuts – but remember – ounce for ounce, nuts are a very nutrient dense food. In one ounce of nuts, you will pick up almost the same number of grams of protein you will get in lean meats – but going along for the ride are a lot of good-for-you fats, plus amazing amounts of things like copper, manganese, and so on. A very little bit of nuts goes a very long way, so sprinkle wisely.

(photos of nuts courtesy of M.C. Demoura, Conan The Librarian, and JeanM1)

From a growing standpoint, places which ordinarily have not been ‘friendly’ to grains such as wheat (find a latitude on any globe where in your own mind – versus anyone else’s – you say, “It’s cold there” and you will find oats growing well there: parts of the former Soviet Union, Norway, Scotland, Canada and the northern US and so on). Weather conditions that make for poor growing conditions for wheat and many other grains (wet conditions, cool conditions, humid conditions, etc.) don’t seem to bother oats.

From a nutritional position, oats can more than hold their own with other grains. They are a great source of minerals such as manganese and selenium (which is something that we actually find it hard to get enough of in today’s diets), phosphorus and magnesium. It’s a great source of fiber.oats

In a one-cup cooked serving (which starts out as ½ cup uncooked), it’s got over 6 grams of protein all by itself and provides Omega 3 as well as Omega 6 fatty acids and a whole bunch of other stuff that frankly are really good for us in terms of vitamins and minerals. They are also a great base in terms of combining them with other food stuffs that will take advantage of the protein and other goodies in oats.

And don’t forget the fiber (because Aunt Toby’s all about the fiber).

Another item about oats which is actually sort of controversial is the issue of gluten. Oats, by themselves, out in the field, don’t have any gluten, so on the face of it, oats would seem a terrific food for people with gluten sensitivities, celiac diseases, inflammation issues and so on….EXCEPT, that people don’t buy oats straight out of the field. They buy oat-something – oats that have been processed, and unless you live in a place where oats and NOTHING BUT OATS can be grown, the mill that has been hulling, cutting, chopping, or whatever-ing the oats into the form that you buy, has also been doing the same things to a whole lot of other grains as well – like barley and wheat and so on. So, when you buy processed oats, you are actually getting oats with gluten contamination from those other grains. Unless the company making the processed product basically creates a mill that handles nothing but oats, consumers will be getting some gluten in their product. However – research indicates that a small amount of oats might be tolerated by people with gluten problems – but that they need to be closely monitored. Can Celiacs Eat Oats?

That being said, oats have their uses for the rest of us. Combining oats with other things is something that we are all very familiar with, if only we’d think about it. First example: the breakfast bowl of oatmeal. Do you know anyone who just cooks up oatmeal and then throws it in a bowl and eats it without…adding something else? OK – so you know people who throw in raisins and/or brown sugar. If nothing else, they should also be putting milk on it, right? Or maybe they are New Wave and throw some vanilla yoghurt and nuts on top. Bingo – more protein, more good fats. As far as I know, the only creatures that eat oats all by themselves are horses.

We like oats a lot Chez Siberia. In the winter, they are a favorite breakfast with milk or yoghurt.

Basic Oatmeal (not ‘quick oats’ or anything like this – made with plain, old thick cut, steel cut, or rolled oats)
For each person, take ½ c. dried, uncooked oats and combine with 1 cup of water in a saucepan.
Slowly, bring to a boil.
Cover the pot, turn down the heat to as low as you can get it.
Check after 5 minutes and stir. If it’s thick enough, put out in the bowls; otherwise, cover again and check in another five min.
Serve with things like: milk, yoghurt, (soy milk if you use that), dried fruit (if you use this, you might not need sugar), and brown sugar or honey if you feel the need.

At other times of the year, they make their appearance in everything from meat loaf to cookies and bars, bread, and the DH’s famous granola and muesli. So, that is what you will get here:

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (modified from The Fanny Farmer Cookbook, 1979 – makes 50-60 cookies)
1 stick of butter
½ cup veg shortening
1.5 cups of sugar (we prefer splitting it 50/50 between white and whatever brown sugar we’ve got)
2 eggs
1 tsp of vanilla
2.5 c. of general purpose flour (if you have specialty flours in your kitchen, a 50/50 split between bread and cake flour works really well)
2 tsp of baking soda
1 cup of oats (we use thick cut, but any rolled or cut oats will do; I have no experience with steel cut oats)
1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips.

Sift the flour and baking soda together. Cream the sugar(s), butter and shortening together. Add the eggs and vanilla followed by the flour and soda mixture. Check it for ‘looseness’ – it basically should be thick and heavy enough that you could really make cookies with it already; if it is too ‘loose’, then add, by tablespoons, more flour until it is. Once it’s really ‘cookie dough’, THEN add the oats and the chips. Put on greased cookie sheets by tablespoonfuls. Bake in a 375 degrees F oven for 11 min. Take off and cool on a rack. Baking Notes: Bake these between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. because otherwise, they disappear within moments – quite magically. Also, don’t try to make them either with all vegetable shortening or all butter. Does not produce a cookie that either holds its shape or resists breaking. These cookies are actually ship-able and will arrive 99% in one piece.

Granola (again, modified from The Fanny Farmer Cookbook, 1979)
Dutch Oven or other large heat-proof baking pot or dish
¾ cup light olive oil(find the stuff with the label, “For sautéing and baking”)
4 cups of oats (rolls, thick cut)
1/2 sesame seeds
½ c wheat germ (and keep your wheat germ in the freezer until you use it; the oils will go rancid if you do not)
1 cup dried coconut (not baking coconut, which has been coated with glycerin and corn starch, ok? – look for ‘dried coconut’ or ‘desiccated coconut’ in health food stores, natural foods, etc.)
1 cup honey (please do yourself a favor and do NOT use commercial stuff like clover honey – get something like wild flower that has some taste to it, ok?)
¾ cup hulled sunflower seeds
1 cup nuts (roasted unsalted peanuts, slivered almonds, cashews, whatever you can get)
1 cup small dried fruit (currants, raisins, craisins tm, chopped dates, etc.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Bring 1 cup of water to a boil and mix with the oil. In a large heavy pot, combine the oats, sesame seeds, wheat germ and coconut. Combine the honey with the oil and water, stirring well and mix into the dry ingredients a little at t eimt. When all the particles are covered with the honey mixture, put the pot into the oven and bake for 15 min. Stir well, Reduce the heat to 275 degrees F and repeat the procedure, stirring every 10-15 min. for 1/5 -2 hours, until the granola is thoroughly toasted. Let the granola cool, then stin in the sunflower seeds nuts and dried fruit. Store in the freezer or refrigerator in tightly sealed containers. Baking notes: This is a rather “soft” granola – this will not have crunchy clumps in it. If you want to produce that, then split up the granola onto cookie sheets, go through basically the same procedure, but don’t stir it up so often; it will clump up and get a lot more crunchy. Also, make the decision right from the get-go about what sort of granola you are going to make and if the rest of the family doesn’t like it, well, then..too bad. Unfortunately, at Chez Siberia, the DH offered to make custom batches for people and now he’s basically tied to the wheel of making ‘granola with nothing in it,” “granola with only nuts” and so on, which is most annoying.

Oatmeal Bread (Maryetta’s Oatmeal Bread from Beard on Bread, 1974)
4 cups boiling water
3 cups rolled oats (we use thick cut but regular rolled will do)
7.5 – 8 cups all purpose flour, preferably unbleached (we use bread flour, but regular will do)
2 packages of active dry yeast (we use 2 Tblsp. Of dried yeast that we get from the natural foods store)
4 Tablespoons of vegetable oil (we use the olive oil meant for ‘sautéing and baking’)
½ cup of molasses (we us ½ cup of our wildflower honey – again, any darker honey will do; the darker the better – best would be buckwheat honey)

Pour the boiling water over the oatmeal in a large bowl and leave to cool.
Stir in 2 cups of flour and the yeast and place in a warm, draft free spot and allow to rise, uncovered until double in bulk.
Punch down and work in the oil, molasses(or honey) and enough of the remaining flour to make s stiff dough.
Turn out on a floured board and counter and knead, adding flour if necessary, to make a smooth, pliable, firm dough; which will take about 10 minutes of good, solid kneading.
Divide dough into three equal pieces and form into loaves to fit three greased 9×5x3 inch loaf pans.
Allow to rise again, uncovered, until doubled in bulk.
Bake in a preheated 350 degrees F oven 40-60 minutes, until the bread sounds hollw when rapped.
Cool on racks before slicing.
Freezes well.

(photos courtesy of Racheliscocnut&lime and Pam-I-Am)

Well, Aunt Toby realized that she missed out on an entire section of stuff that gets sold at farmers markets (and increasingly gets sold, I might add), which is meat.

Honest to gosh, shrink wrapped (though usually not on a slab of Styrofoam, in my experience), frozen, labeled with weights on ‘em, meat. And many times, they are labeled with words such as ‘free range’, ‘pasture raised’, ‘grass fed’ and so on. This is to differentiate them from what’s in your butcher or supermarché, which generally is ‘conventionally raised meat’ which means “grain raised”.

And when you see ‘grain raised’, the little voice of reason in your head should be saying, “and that means, ‘corn fed’.”

Not that ranchers and feedlot operators do not feed animals other grains to ‘finish’ off the animals that they are raising for slaughter (and when they say ‘finish’ what they are talking about is NOT ‘finishing the process of growing’ although that is what is happening; they mean ‘putting a finish on and into the meat’ and by that, they mean – fattening the animal up). Most feed rations out there have a combination of grains in them: wheat, corn, rapeseed, alfalfa, etc. Feed Ingredients

But the king of feed grains, due to its price and due to what it does to animals that eat it, is corn. Corn is King.

When the DH and I were raising chickens, lambs and goats for market, we especially used corn in the ration we fed in the winter time because of what was referred to as ‘heat’ – if it was especially cold, a little corn in the ration would keep the animals warmer. Why? Because corn has fat in it that animals can use to keep themselves warm in really cold weather. But in conventionally raised animals, corn feeding causes the muscles (the meat) to contain a relatively higher ratio of one sort of fatty acid than of others. That fatty acid is: Omega 6.

Now, Aunt Toby is not going to get into a discussion about ‘good fat’ and ‘bad fat’ or this Omega vs. that Omega. The human body requires a little bit of all of them; it is the balance that causes all the mischief.
Omega-3 Fatty Acid
Omega-6 Fatty Acid

What I AM going to talk about (because Aunt Toby is all about the pragmatic aspects) is some basic facts about ‘grass-fed’ vs conventionally-raised meats and should you choose to buy them, what you can do to get the best out of the meat.

Because if you try to cook pasture raised meats the same way you cook conventionally-raised meats, your garbage can is going to be very very happy and you will be going back to your farmer and saying, “I want my money back; this tasted like my shoes”.

First things first: Nutritionally, what are the differences between grass raised/pasture raised meats and conventionally raised meats?
1) No matter how you measure it, pasture raised meats have much less overall fat than conventionally raised (grain fed) meat.
2) No matter how you measure it, pasture raised meats have a much smaller % of Omega 6 fatty acids in them than grain fed meat.
3) Grass fed meats have vitamins that conventionally raised meats lack or have much less of. Health Benefits of Grass-Raised meats

From a cooking and “putting on the plate” aspect, what do the first two items mean for consumers?

In meat (whether beef, pork, chicken, turkeys, lamb, etc.), it is fat that carries the flavor of the meat. Let’s not fool ourselves in this – for all the push by the health community toward low fat meats, we’ve ended up with some meats and some cuts of meats that frankly taste like paper towels because they have so little fat in them. At the same time, the lower the percentage of fat in the meat, the more time and care must be taken by consumers to cook it so that it will taste good, feel good in your mouth, cut well and so on. And unfortunately, consumers still think that they can throw a piece of meat or a quarter of a chicken on a grill or into an oven with a high temperature and get something memorable.

Well, it’s memorable all right but it’s not a memory that they want.

Secondly, by any measure, the higher the Omega 6 fatty acids in meat, the higher the temperature can be in the oven or on the grill. I am not an organic chemist, but the difference in cooking conventionally raised chicken and pasture raised could not be more dramatic. With conventional, I can put a piece of chicken in my oven set anywhere between 375 degrees F and 400 degrees F. The fat starts to liquefy very quickly – I can move that piece of chicken from a raw state to the plate in 30-45 min. (depending on whether or not this is boneless chicken or bone-in). Because there is so much fat in the bird, both inside the muscle and on top of the muscle and under the skin, I not only can quickly cook this bird (and get that crispy skin that will cause us all to end up with cancer, right?), but I’m internally basting the muscles with the liquefied fat that is being drawn off the bird by the high heat. The chicken itself does not have a whole lot of flavor to it – a large part of that is the breed (Cornish-Rock crosses which are bred to be the ‘beanstalk’ chickens of the battery world – these go from chick to Styrofoam in 6-8 weeks. They literally have not had time for the muscles to mature enough to gain any flavor) – but the other part of it is that the high heat is moving the flavor-carrying item, the fat, off the muscles much too quickly. At the same time, however, consumers will end up with meat that is cooked and relatively moist.

With pasture raised chicken and turkey, I have to be much more careful. I have to use my meat thermometer a lot because I am looking for a very specific temperature. I have to give myself several hours to cook the bird because I’m starting it at 325 and moving it to 350. No more. It seems to take a very long time, relatively speaking, for the fat to start coming out (and dressed pasture raised birds do not have nearly the same amount of visible fat – unlike conventionally raised birds, I am definitely not taking out great handfuls of fat from the internal cavities and so on). Pasture raised meats cannot be cooked under high heat conditions – because of the low percentage of fat and because of the ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 fatty acids in the meat, if I try to cook them the same way I can cook conventionally raised meats, I will end up with something resembling shoes. Anyone who has cooked game or wild meats will have the same experience. LOW and SLOW. Pasture raised meats are not something you can leave out on the counter when you leave for work, throw into a hot oven when you get home, and hope to have an edible meal on the table in 45 min. That is a given.

So, if you as a consumer would like to move your family to pasture raised meats (and there are all sorts of good, honest, health and local economic reasons for doing so), my advice to you is this:

1) Get big honkin’ cuts of pasture raised meats: roasts, a turkey, a big roasting chicken.
2) Use your weekends to slowly and tenderly cook this item so that you can have a lovely weekend dinner (hoo-wee – remember those?).
3) Then either slice it up and package for the freezer to be used later on or use it over the week for sandwiches, sliced with gravy for dinners, etc. etc. You will have lovely, flavorful, cooked meat which you as a time-stressed consumer can use as you need it. You won’t have to fire up the oven or grill under stressed conditions.

At the same time, I know there are some readers who are saying to themselves, “But Aunt Toby – pasture raised meats are soooo much more expensive than conventionally raised.”

Yep – Aunt Toby is not going to lie to you – the price per pound is going to be more. But the question comes down to this (and Aunt Toby has discussed this before in terms of price per pound of protein): when you buy meat, what are you buying? What should you be buying?

You buy meat for – protein. That’s what you want to get out of this relationship – not fat and certainly not the type of fat that appears to cause cardio vascular disease and inflammatory syndromes. I’m not saying the pasture raised meats are not expensive – they cost a lot more per pound than conventional ones do – but I am fairly sure that considering what consumers get out of eating them in terms of health benefits, in terms of not paying for fat that gets cooked off, in terms of greater flavor, that they just might be worth it. This is of course totally ignoring the locally grown aspects and the facts that you can, nose to nose, ask the producer exactly what has been given to the animals, how they were treated, and so on. That is ‘feel good’ stuff and is very difficult to quantify – but worth considering in any case.

So, remember, low and slow. We learned this at a wonderful ‘grass fed grilling’ workshop that was arranged by our county Cooperative Extension in support of local grass fed meat producers. If you want one, call and ask your Cooperative Extension or suggest it to the manager of your local farmers market. It will really open your eyes to how meat should taste and feel.

For more information on grass fed meats and how to cook them:

Grass Fed Cooking
Texas Grass Fed Beef
Grass Fed Cooking Tips

(Grass fed roast chicken at the top, courtesy of my son, who followed the directions and produced a really delicious bird, along with roasted carrots, potatoes, and onions. If he can do it, so can you)

salmonella testimony

For those of us who have some concerns, what are our options?

One of Aunt Toby’s concerns is that even if I wanted to make my own peanut or other nut butter, I’d had to deal with possible contamination issues because I don’t have any control over how the nuts were handled before they got to my kitchen counter. Considering the description of the conditions of the warehousing and processing facilities of PCA, I certainly wonder what conditions are elsewhere. At the same time, I have some concerns about what I’m getting in my peanut butter just to start with.

Here’s the nutritional info from the label of the ‘organic’ peanut butter that gets used Chez Siberia:
Serving size: 2 Tablespoons
Calories: 200
Fat Calories: 150
Total Fat: 16 g
Sat. Fat: 4 g.
Total Carb: 6 g.
Dietary Fiber: 2 g.
Sugars: 2g.
Protein: 8 g.
Sodium: 85 mg.

A spread that we’ve fallen in love with at our house, and which has been used as a dip, sandwich spread, and wrapper filling, is Hummus, that humble stuff from the Middle East made up of mashed up garbanzo beans and a couple of other ingredients. Here’s a recipe that comes from the “Flat Belly Diet Cookbook” (2008, Rodale Press): Rodale Cookbook

“1 can (15.5-19 oz) garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed.
½ c. Tahini (sesame seed paste – get the light colored one)
4 cloves of garlic
¼ freshly squeezed lemon juice
¼-1/2 c. of water
¼ tsp of salt

Place the beans, tahini, garlic, lemon juice, ¼ c. of water and salt into a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Process until smooth. Add more water, if needed, until the hummus reaches the desired consistency.”

Now, we don’t use any added salt Chez Siberia, so we did not use salt. I did not have any lemons in the house, so I used the bottled lemon juice I had in the fridge. We don’t have a food processor, so I used our trusty blender, and other than having to stop it and stir everything around a couple of times to make sure nothing got jammed into the blades at the bottom, it worked fantastically. The whole process took all of about 10 minutes, tops – and that’s with all the additional stirring. If Aunt Toby had a food processor, I bet we’d be able to knock this off in half the time.

The one secret NOT told in the cookbook is this: RESIST THE URGE TO EAT THIS STUFF RIGHT AWAY. If you do, all you will taste is the garlic. Put it into some sort of sealable container and put it into your fridge for 24-36 hours, and THEN take it out. Fantastic.

Here’s the nutritional information on this recipe (one of the great aspects of this cookbook is that every recipe has nutrition per serving info):
Serving size: ¼ cup
Calories: 126
Total Fat: 9 g.
Sat. Fat: 2 g.
Total Carbs: 10 g.
Dietary Fiber: 2 g.
Sugars: -0-
Protein: 5 g.
Sodium: 121 mg. (I did not use the extra salt and I washed and drained the garbanzos several times, so I don’t think there is a whole lot of salt in there – that is from the addition of the salt in the recipe)

Now, I’m sure some of my faithful readers are saying, “But, Aunt Toby, I can get more protein out of a serving of peanut butter.”

Ah, but here’s the rub on that. Have you ever tried to make a peanut butter sandwich with 2 tablespoons of peanut butter? Think about it. To get enough ‘stuff’ between two slices of bread that you end up feeling as if you really ate something, you used more than 2 tablespoons, didn’t you? Check out that photo at the top — I measured out those servings very carefully onto that plate. That really IS 2 tablespoons of peanut butter and ¼ cup of the hummus.

Most people making a PB&J are using at least 3 tablespoons – and yes, you will get 12 grams of protein – WOOHOO. You are also ‘buying’ that protein with a tremendous amount of fat. Most of it is not terrible fat either – peanut oil is not truly ‘naughty’. But in terms of calories, there are only 50 calories in that serving of peanut butter that are NOT fat. You are ‘buying’ your protein a lot more cheaply in terms of calories and fat in the hummus. The other thing is that you get to eat a whole ¼ cup of hummus – that’s twice as much (1 cup = 16 tablespoons). You can put that into a tortilla with some salad greens, cucumber and pepper and feel as if you’ve really filled yourself up.

Can you get kids to eat this stuff for lunch? You bet. I like it as a sandwich with lots of greens but if your kids would rather, make it into a wrap, or take a tortilla, cut into quarters, toast it a little bit and have them use it like crackers to scoop it up. With a little freezer packet in their lunch kits, they could take a small container and eat it with crackers and some fruit.

Cost: Well, I had a lot of these ingredients in my fridge and freezer already. All I had to do was buy a can of garbanzos and some tahini, but here’s my estimate as to how much this cost me:
1 can of garbanzos: $.69
½ c. of tahini: $.1.33
Garlic: A bulb of garlic is in the $.50 range and has between 10-15 cloves, so we’ll throw in $. 20 for the garlic.
Lemon Juice: I am going to estimate $.50 for ¼ c. of bottled lemon juice here

Total cost to me: $2.63 and it made about a pound of hummus. Each serving cost 65 cents. Now, I’ve bought store-made hummus and it’s $4.99 a pound, so doing this is definitely worth the money.

Now, back to the original point about contaminated peanut butter: Can canned garbanzo beans (or any other bean for that matter) become contaminated? You bet. As a matter of fact, last year there was a huge recall of called beans of various kinds from a company in Michigan that were contaminated with Clostridium Botulinum – Botulism, another potentially deadly contaminant. The difference to me, though, is that when canned goods are contaminated, and the bacteria start to grow, they produce gas and the ends of the cans start to bulge – a sure sign of contamination. The average consumer can pick up a can and SEE the bulging, and can call the local health department; the CDC, their local grocery store and can dispose of the product safely. With those peanut products and peanut butter, there was no way to tell. It might just be more worth your while and peace of mind to…make a different and perhaps safer and cheaper spread.

Can you make hummus out of other beans than garbanzos? I’ve never tried it but I’d like to try the same thing with black beans, which are my absolute favorite bean. I think they have a lot of flavor – the color is bound to be a bit funky (ever eat black bean soup – the flavor is to die for but the color….eeeeeeew), but I’ll bet with some Mexican spices, it will be fantastic with tortillas.

Left over mashed potatoes are a great thing to have, especially if you have resisted the urge (because we are all about resisting urges here at Chez Siberia on the Susquehanna) to put garlic in them when you make them. If you want garlic mashed potatoes, make the mashed potatoes first, take out a couple of cups extra, seal them up in the container of your choice (yoghurt containers tend to be used for this at my house), and THEN do the addition of the cooked and mashed up garlic. Tastes the same and now you have mashed potatoes that you have the choice of what to do with.

If you start with garlic mashed potatoes, then you are stuck with making savory things rather than sweet things, so having sort of a neutral form of mashed potatoes (which actually sounds like “baby puppies” I realize, since mashed potatoes, by definition, are pretty neutral all by themselves) is really the optimal deal.

And, speaking of “savory things,” what you are looking at in that photograph above is the number one fav on my DS’ list of “Mom, will you make xxx when I get home?” This is a homey, and frankly homely, thing called “fish patties.”

Now, if you have access to wonderful (and expensive) stuff like Bacalla (salt cod), then you can ritz this up by soaking that and doing cod fish cakes, but the title of this series is not “Ritzy and Good” – it’s CHEAP and Good, and I grew up with these babies and …well, so there.

These are made with canned tuna fish.

Now – I know there are a lot of folks out there who will not eat canned tuna for various reasons and I am frankly not going to get into that discussion here.

And I’m not advocating eating canned tuna (or for that matter fresh – Jeremy Piven, are you and your mercury titers listening to ME?) on a daily basis. Tuna, like other fish in the food chain such as striped bass, blue fish etc., eat other fish. And those other fish may eat other smaller fish and so on and so forth down, down, down, to crustaceans and plankton and Dog only knows what else. And, as you go up the food chain with bigger and bigger fish, things…mmm…tend to get concentrated and that is how we end up with mercury et al. in the food that we eat (remind me sometime to tell you the story about why the Inuit do NOT eat Polar Bear liver…lift your hair, it will).

But, canned tuna (and canned salmon – another wonderful protein source and more likely to be wild caught than anything else) is one thing we love here at Aunt Toby’s kitchen: it’s cheap. It’s 100% protein and you get 2.5 servings of protein out of each can. So, it’s one of the cheapest forms of protein you can get. But…looking at that little can – there’s not a whole lot IN there, is there? And if you have kids with voracious appetites that need to have all their corners filled up, what are you going to do?

Fill ‘em up with these – they are hot, good and take care of all the corners.

Tuna Patties – makes 10 patties as big as your hand. Two on a plate with veggies will feed one adult. My son, however, requires four, but he inhales his food.

2 cans of tuna packed in water – choose the mildest flavor you can find.
2 C. of mashed potatoes (if you have to make them fresh, this takes three fist-sized potatoes, cooked and mashed with a little bit of milk and butter; this also works well with mashed potatoes that have had stuff like garlic or spices mashed into them)
1 egg
1 onion (half the size of your fist), diced teeny
½ C. bread crumbs or matzoh meal
Spices (if you have flavored bread crumbs, they usually have spices in them, but if you don’t, then put in a couple of teaspoons of dried oregano and basil for Italian or try spices that you’d use for Mexican or Indian…use a sparing hand with kids, though; too spicy and they may not eat them)

Mix all of this all together. If it seems a little bit wet, put more meal or crumbs in it. You want something that has the consistency of meat balls so that it will hold together.

Two ways to make these:
Baked: Form into patties and bake for 20-25 min. on a greased cookie sheet at 375 degrees.
Fried: Put a little oil into a fry pan (I use an electric one set at 325) and fry, covered until mostly firm on one side, then flip. They will be crispy on both sides and everything will be cooked all the way through.
Serve with – any sauce you like – ketchup is a fav with kids, but cocktail sauce works, salad dressings, etc.

Now, for the sweet. And this is definitely short and sweet: Put a cup of mashed potatoes into any yeast baked good you make and you will improve the performance of the whole dough tremendously. They also will stay fresher longer. Don’t get too nervous about recipes – just throw a cup of mashed potatoes into the bowl along with the liquid and the yeast etc. and then start to add the flour. You will need less flour to make the dough of course. This is especially good when you make cinnamon buns. But, of course, it also means that you want to be starting with neutral, unflavored mashed potatoes (see above discussion about garlic mashed).

Another “sweet” that you can use mashed potatoes for is definitely a regional historic item: mashed potato candy. I thought this was a creature of Maine only; I have since found out that there are recipes from all over the US based on the use of left over mashed potatoes (but again, you will want to use plain cold mashed potatoes rather than something you’ve mashed something else into for this). Here is one from Maine and here is the ingredients list:

4 cups confectioners’ sugar
4 cups flaked coconut
3/4 cup cold, plain potatoes, mashed (do not use leftover mashed potatoes made with milk or butter)
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 pound dark candy coating
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Maine Potato Candy

So, lesson learned: do NOT throw out those left over mashed potatoes; as a matter of fact, peel and throw in an extra potato so that you have plenty of mashed potatoes in the fridge!!

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

And you are really quite fed up with it sitting there and are about to unceremoniously throw the poor thing into the garbage, scraping out the roasting pan and letting it be done at that.

“Step away from the roaster, Sir (or Ma’am) and no one will get hurt.”

Now is the time to show some restraint and respect for the poor bird who “gave it up” for your family yesterday. We’re going to turn it into soup today! You will need: the turkey carcass and hopefully the pan that you cooked it in with all the lovely stuff still in it, plus a little salt or a can of chicken or turkey broth.

Take a big pan – like a Dutch Oven – and scrape what was in the roasting pan (veggies, jellied liquid and all) into the Dutch Oven.

Break up the carcass into pieces that will fit into the Dutch Oven and put enough water in the Dutch Oven to just about cover the pieces of the carcass. (Disclaimer, because I know someone out there will remind me about this: If your muni water system adds chemicals like fluoride, chlorine, etc. or if your tap water has “smells,” then you are going to want to use another source for your water, like spring water)

If you want to put more aromatic veggies in there like onions, garlic, and celery, chop them up and add them now.

Cover and bring to a boil and turn down the heat to simmer for a couple of hours. Then, pull out the bones and pull off any meat that has not fallen off.

NOW you can throw out the carcass.

Strain the liquid through a sieve into a bowl or another pot and put the sieve aside. Now, we need to chill the liquid and get off the extra fat. You can do this by putting it into your fridge, or, if you lack room and it’s winter time, cover the pot tightly and put it outside on the porch, deck or whatever in a secure place. This is your stock.

In the meantime, go through what you separated out and take out the meat. Frankly, at this point, the veggies have given up their best flavor to the stock and you can either do what you normally do with vegetable peels, or put them on the compost heap. Chop up the meat into a smallish dice.

Once the stock has chilled enough, uncover it. The fat will have risen to the top and made a cake, which you can break up into chunks and take out. If you like to use fat with flavor in it to cook other things, then you can wash these pieces off and store in a container in your refrigerator and use it as you wish. In Eastern European Jewish cooking, this stuff would be called Schmalz (that’s sort of an umbrella term and also includes goose fat and chicken fat). There will always be a little bit of the fat still in the stock; it will have plenty of flavor, believe me.

To finish up the soup, put back the meat and new veggies that you want into the soup (more onions, carrots, celery), plus anything like barley or rice. NOW taste the soup. If it doesn’t taste as strongly as you’d like, add a little salt to it, or add a can of chicken or turkey broth. You can cook rice or barley right in the soup as it heats up; if you have already cooked grains available as left overs, then the process just goes faster.

Heat up your soup again and simmer it until the veggies and grains are tender.

Serve and enjoy; refrigerate or freeze the leftovers!

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)