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!

Sort of the cooking version of “I didn’t have sex with that woman.” Sorry. My bad.

But, typical for me. I discovered using crepes when I wanted to make baked manicotti and didn’t have any manicotti. Remind me to tell you about the time I wanted to make Szechuan Duck and only had turkey legs.

Substitution, people!!!

Crepes are not really pancakes in the way that we know pancakes in the United States. Our pancake have a leavening agent in it to make the pancakes rise and get all puffy and thick. The big stack. Crepes are really simple and have much more in common with pasta than with pancakes because there is no leavening agent in it and it is simply flour, eggs, and a little water, milk or a combination of the two. Pasta is simply flour and eggs with perhaps a little water. Think of crepe batter as liquefied pasta.

There are sweetened crepe batters for dessert use (if you feel the need; I use the same batter for everything); regular unsweetened ones for main dish and vegetable use. All we are talking here is batter poured into a hot greased pan, twirled around so that it goes up the sides and cooks all thin, flipped out and onto a plate. Fill with something, pour some sort of sauce on top and serve. Crepes are a great way to use up leftovers in the fridge – you can put anything into crepes: seafood in a white or cheese sauce, chicken, meat, vegetables, vegetarian stuff – you name it. Just remember that crepes really don’t have a whole lot of flavor of their own – so make sure the fillings and sauces are complex and flavorful so that the dish doesn’t end up bland.

How to Make Crepes: You know, if making crepes were as difficult as people think it is, then performing cold fusion on your kitchen table would be possible. Seriously. Here is a great demo on making crepes. My only area of differing is that I use a cast iron enameled omelet pan; this chef uses a pan with Teflon™ on it. A major difference is that if I dropped that pan onto the chef’s foot – he’d feel it for a month. That pan weighs a ton and when I use it, I try to switch hands for every crepe because it makes for better muscle development in both arms that way. Here’s the demo – watch the swirl part – that’s the business end of crepe making (besides getting the pan HOT). Chef Todd Mohr Makes Crepes

Here is my crepe recipe:
1 cup of cold water
1 cup of milk (any type will do)
4 large eggs
¼ cup of olive oil (the type labeled “for sautéing and baking”)
2 cups of all purpose flour (I used 1 cup of bread flour and 1 cup of cake flour)

Combine water and milk
Put the eggs and the olive oil into the mixing bowl and beat.
Alternate flour and the water milk mixture until you have a thinnish sort of batter – like the quality of thin cake batter. NOT LIKE PANCAKE BATTER.
Let sit to allow the flour particles to soften up.

Watch the video and do what the chef does. If you use a regular omelet pan, you will need to heat it up and then at the last minute, put in a pat of butter. Don’t heat up the butter in the pan – it will take too long and burn.

Make all your crepes and put them on a plate. Do NOT put the plate into the oven, ok?

Here are three different and totally non-French ways to use crepes (I realize that this puts me on the other side from the folks who insist on things like the fact that champagne can only come from France, but go along with me here – knowing how to make crepes and do stuff with them opens whole new vistas in terms of quick meals at home), in order of the meal:

Appetizer crepes:
Sliding little cooked vegetable and cheese filled crepes is a very nice appetizer – and just filling enough to hold people through cocktails so that they won’t hit the table like a bunch of starving Rombovians. Great combinations:
Winter squash with a little nutmeg
Steamed broccoli with cheese
Black beans, cooked with major garlic and onions, smooshed up, with or without a little cheddar cheese

Main Dish crepes:
There is nothing that you can’t put into a crepe. The fillings used in the appetizer crepes can be expanded and used in larger crepes for main dish crepes. Other great fillings include everything from chicken, fish, tuna, seafood, beef, left over anything. Here’s a tip: Any recipe that calls for tortillas or pasta – you can basically work it around to a filling for crepes. Here’s our version of Enchiladas Suizas:
Ingredients:
6-8 crepes
2 boneless chicken breasts, sliced thinly
1 can of crushed tomatoes
1 medium onion, diced
2 tablespoons of taco seasoning OR:
1 clove of garlic, minced
¼ tsp each of ground cumin and coriander
1 small can of diced green chilis
1 cup of shredded cheese such as Monterey jack or Munster
Sautee the chicken in a little olive oil, sprinked with the spices or taco seasoning. Set aside.
In the same pan, sautee the onion (if you need more oil, add a little oil), add the can of tomatoes and diced green chilis.
Cover the bottom of a baking dish with the onions/tomatoes/chilis (I do this in an electric fry pan as a one dish meal, but you can bake it in the oven too)
Put 2-4 pieces of the chicken in a crepe, put a pinch of the cheese on top and roll up. Put into the pan. Finish up all the chicken and crepes.
Cover the crepes with the rest of the onions/tomatoes/chilis and sprinkle the cheese on the top.
Bake for 20-25 min. in a 375 degree oven until the cheese is all melted. If you use an electric fry pan, put the heat on 300 and once it’s bubbly, it’s ready to serve.

Aunt Toby’s Cannoli Crepes.
I LOVE cannolis. But the part I like the best is the filling..I hate the deep fried shells. So here is my version of a cannoli, made with crepes.

Make your crepes (this recipe will make 5 crepes with a LOT of filling in them).

Cannoli filling. You can actually buy cannoli filling in some groceries now. I prefer to make my own – it’s simple to do.
2 cups of ricotta (I use whole milk but part skim will work also). If it looks sort of loose, then put it in cheese cloth or a strainer and let it drip for a while.
1 cup of powdered sugar
1 tsp. Of orange or lemon zest
1 tsp. Of almond extract

Chocolate glaze and garnish:
½ cup of chocolate chips
2 tablespoons of butter, unsalted
2 tablespoons of water
Slivered almonds for garnish

Make the filling:
Whip up the ricotta with the powdered sugar, zest and extract and put into the fridge to chill.

Make the glaze:
Put the chocolate chips into a heatproof dish and microwave for 2 minutes, 1 minute at a time, keep checking. Once it starts to melt, add the butter and zap again for a minute. Take out and mix it up with a spoon. It will be thick – add the water until it gets more like a glaze. If you need a little bit more water, that is ok.

Assemble:
Put a good big spoonful of the filling in the middle of the crepe and roll up. Do this until you have finished all the crepes. If you have extra filling, put it in a sealed container and put into the fridge.
Once you have all your filled crepes lined up on a dish, pour the chocolate glaze over the top and garnish with almonds. Refrigerate until you are ready to serve.

Roasting is the deal. Whether wrapped in foil on the grill or in a pan (with or without a beast on top of it) in the oven, roasting is good for root veggies for primarily one reason: The heat transforms the starch (and all root veggies have carbs up the gazoo) into sugars, so the vegetables taste sweeter than they do either raw (and there is nothing wrong with eating raw root veggies, including potatoes and recent research points to eating raw root veggies in terms of preventing colon cancer. raw potatoes

But, we are not talking raw (raw, raw, raw..that’s the spirit) today. We’re talking roasted. I think everyone at some time has had potatoes that have been roasted, and in many families, roasting them by putting them under the meat in a roasting pan is traditional (and causes fights at the dinner table, I might add).

General guidelines for roasting root veggies (and if you do a search on ‘roasting root veggies’ be prepared to be inundated with responses; this is a cooking method that has just taken off over the past ten years):

All root veggies do NOT take the same amount of time. If you throw all the veggies into the pan in the oven, you will end up with ‘three bears veggies”: some overcooked; some undercooked; and some just right. Best to check how long each individual vegetable needs, prepare them in different pans (or foil wraps), set a timer and put them in as you need them.

The temperature to roast veggies (by themselves) is 400 degrees F. if you are roasting them in the bottom of the roasting pan with meat, they will be done when the meat is done.

Put a little water or other liquid in the wrap or pan with the veggies so that they do not burn. All veggies will have a certain amount of moisture in them which will carry them through the roasting process, but at the beginning, a little ‘juice’ in the bottom helps the vegetables to start releasing their own moisture and will prevent burning.

Roasted root vegetables can be served hot (as in the roast potatoes under the meat from the oven) or, they can be allowed to chill and be turned into all sorts of lovely dishes. Just do a search on ‘roasted root salad’ and see what you get.

And speaking of roasted root salad, here is my version of a Roasted beet and carrot salad with onions and oranges (there are quite a few versions of this out there – this is just mine and involves sticking my head in the fridge to see what is there that I can use). This makes enough for 4-6 people (depending on how many teenagers you have or how much people like beets and carrots).

Ingredients:
Beets: I had two fist-sized one and one Moby Dick beet out of the garden, I trimmed off the root end and left a little bit of the stems. Beets bleed and there is no way around it; the less you cut them, the less they bleed.

Carrots: I have a bunch of carrots I pulled up and trimmed both ends and cut the biggest ones vertically in half. I wash and scrub mine well – I don’t peel them because a lot of the nutritional good stuff is just under the skin.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Put the beets with a little water (like less than a ½ inch in the bottom of the pan) in a pan and cover. I put mine into a loaf pan and put aluminum foil on it and sealed it up. Put in the oven and leave for 1 hour (beets take 1.5 hours by themselves).

Put the carrots into another pan and cover. Put in the oven with the beets for the last half hour.

Take out of the oven and allow to cool. While they are cooling, do the following:

Red onion: Thinly slice about a cup of red onions.
Oranges: Prepare two oranges as if you are going to make fruit salad to get the outside membranes off them (see the photo).

Combine with:
2 tablespoons of light olive oil (the stuff for sautéing and baking)
2 tablespoons of a mild nut (I used almonds – others that can be used would be hazel nuts, filberts, or something like sunflower seeds). If you want to use this as a main dish instead of a side dish, you will need to add more protein: more nuts and seeds, or nuts and some form of cheese or perhaps cooked and cooled beans (black beans would go well here, I think).

Mix together:
1 tablespoon of fresh coriander (if you can’t get fresh, 1 tsp. Of dried coriander)
½ cup of fruit juice: orange juice, grapefruit juice, combinations thereof (you could probably also use a couple of tablespoons of white balsamic vinegar).
Pour this over the onions and oranges.

When the carrots and beets are all cool, peel the beets (this is easy – cut the top with the stems off and the bottom off and put a knife under the peel at the top and pull – it will come right off and sometimes the whole thing will come off in one pull). Then slice the carrots and beets into bite-sized pieces. Combine with the onions, nuts, oranges and the dressing. Refrigerate and serve.

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)

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.

We’re back in the kitchen (you guys think I really live here, right…kicking the sleeping bag back under the table) with the thought of Christmas Day, which is usually filled with eating things that you would frankly shudder to think about on any other day, capped with a dinner (either at your house or someone else’s) that will send you waddling for the bathroom (and the antacids) later on.

Any way to stop that? Well, I’m not sure, but I’m a big proponent of getting a good slug of protein in the morning and also of the “anything you can shovel into a tortilla” form of breakfast. This can be eaten formal style at the table, or handed to a child running through the kitchen with the admonishment, “Stop for a minute and eat this.” This just might slow down the “hands in the cookie jar and fudge plate” until later in the day.

Think of these tacos as the “nutritional pre-emptive strike.” For that, nothing beats eggs. Eggs are one of your best and cheapest forms of protein. Figure two per person, unless you are trying to cut down on cholesterol, in which case, count on one whole one and two egg whites per person.

What’s in the picture:

Scrambled eggs and cooked bulk breakfast sausage (ours is lamb that we can get from a local farmer – YMMV – drain it well – omit for a vegetarian meal) garnished with sautéed colorful sweet peppers.

Tortillas, wrapped in foil and warmed in a 350 degree oven

Sautéed onions and mushrooms

Simple fruit salad of sliced kiwi and oranges

Shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Home made salsa from the garden

A lot of this can be prepared the night before (while the Spousal Unit is trying to figure out how to put something together); the tortillas, eggs and sausage can be cooked up in the morning during the first “time out” after the initial paper ripping and present admiration activities.

This literally is the sort of thing that people can wander through the kitchen and grab on their own; if you have a “hot plate” that you can keep the dish or sausage/eggs on and covered, you can keep this sort of thing going for an hour or so. It’s also the sort of thing that if you are hosting people for a morning open house, it’s cheap, good, filling and won’t make anyone feel too tight or guilty.

Merry Christmas.

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

Let’s take a look at chowder, that theoretically quintessential American soup.

Actually…it’s not. Chowder comes from the French word chaudiere. This is the name of a big pot that is basically used for things like stews, because if you look at the word, it contains another French word, chaud, which means hot.

If you look at the map of New England, you will notice that it snuggles up against historically French areas of Canada: the Maritimes and Quebec. The Maritimes are great fishing areas still. And, if you look in any phone book, from Castile, Maine to parts of northern Vermont you will see hundreds and hundreds of people with names like Thibodaux, Dubois, Michault et al. — the border between the US and Canada in those areas is remarkably porous and people for hundreds of years passed back and forth, or were forced out of places like Nova Scotia and moved and brought their customs, dishes and big iron pots with them. And stews and soups made out of fish and shellfish have been around for a very long time.

So what makes chowder chowder rather than just a cream-based soup?

Every New England chowder (whether it’s clam, fish, corn or whatever) starts the same exact way. It is the ultimate “clean out the fridge” sort of dish with lots of chunked up potatoes. You will want to make sure you’ve got the following things already chopped up and cooked:
A couple of big potatoes, peeled, cubed up and boiled until fork tender
Cooked (or canned) clams and/or steamed firm white fish

In general, here is the way to make clam or fish chowder:

Chop up salt pork or a couple of slices of thick bacon and fry it up, pulling out the very very tasty fat.

Fry up about a cup of chopped onions in that rendered fat.

Season with some thyme, parsley, pepper

Pour in a couple of cans of low salt chicken (or vegetable based) stock

Pour in 1-2 bottles of clam juice

Add milk or cream (1/2c to 1 c)

Thicken it up with bread crumbs or broken up crackers

Heat up until it’s steaming and then put in the clams/fish fillets which have been chunked up and let that come to temperature (a pound of fish will make a whole lot of this)

Garnish with pepper and serve.

Don’t boil it back up once you put in the fish or clams – it makes the seafood rubbery. If you happen to have some left over mashed potatoes in the fridge, you can throw those in to thicken it up as well. Basically, you’ve got a chunky thick cream-based stew.

The major difference between New England and Manhattan clam chowder is not just the use of a tomato base; there are also chopped up celery, carrots, and onions in it and no clam juice. So this is a completely different breed of cat entirely. New England clam chowder is really a creature of the fisherman and the farmer bringing together foods that were readily available right there: milk from cows, basic vegetables, pork and fish or clams.

Money saving tip: Well, on the clam side, you can use canned clams. On the fish side, that is a lot trickier. Any firm white fish will do: cod, halibut – I’ve even seen recipes that call for grouper. Frozen fish is less expensive than fresh. Tillapia can be pretty reasonable also. You can substitute mild tasting canned fish like white albacore in water for fresh or frozen fish. You can also use frozen shrimp (just make sure to clean them and cook them first if you are not buying them precooked).

Now for the Op-Ed part: I think corn chowder is a total and complete nutritional waste of time. I find it boring, bland and useless. To get any nutritional good out of it, you have to pair it with a sandwich that contains its own protein. At that point, you may as well just eat the sandwich with a glass of milk and be done with it.

If I have offended the Corn Chowder Lobby, I am sorry and I will further offend with the following suggestion: if you have to make corn chowder, take a can of any white bean (great northerns, navy, cannellini, etc.), rinse them, heat them up in a bit of olive oil, mash them up with some of the liquid part of the soup until they have the consistency of refried beans and keep adding soup liquid until they are sloppy and put that back into the soup pot. 1) They are white, 2) they will thicken up the soup and 3) they have a lot of fiber and good quality protein in them and will, in combination with the corn, give you a complete protein.

There, I’ve done my culinary duty.

And finally, here is today’s recipe. I had to clean out the fridge because the DH brought home all the uneaten shrimp from an office party and as we all know, that stuff will not keep. The photograph above is the result of that effort – Shrimp Chowder. It’s got a lot of zip from the various sorts of veggies and spices; it’s interesting looking and even the DH, who is NOT a chowder eater, liked it.

• 2-3 potatoes as big as your fist, peeled and cubed
• 2 cans reduced sodium chicken broth
• 3 stalks of celery, chopped – get rid of the bottom couple of inches
• 1 fist-sized onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped sweet pepper – I used some multi-colored bells I had in the fridge
• 2 T. olive oil
• 2 T. unsalted butter, divided into two pieces
• 1 1/2 cups milk – I used 1% because that’s what we’ve got
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup fat-free evaporated milk
• 25 pre-cooked medium shrimp, (for uncooked, I’d go with at least a pound, peeled and deveined and cooked)
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper

–In a big saucepan or dutch oven, put a couple of table spoons of olive oil and 1 T. of unsalted butter and heat up. Don’t let it burn.

–Put in the chopped up onions, peppers, and celery, cover, put on low and cook, occasionally stirring for 10-15 min. Don’t let it burn.

– In a different saucepan, put the chicken broth and the potatoes and boil that up. Once the potatoes are fork tender, turn the heat off and take out half the potatoes and set aside. Add the milk to the pot with the broth and potatoes and turn off the heat.

– Once the veggies are really soft, take a potato masher and mush up half of the veggies and add the set aside potatoes and mash those up too. So, in the pot on one side, you’ll have mashed up potatoes and mashed veggies. On the other side of the pot, you’ll have cooked but unmashed veggies. Take off the heat for the moment.

– In a small saucepan, put the other tablespoon of unsalted butter and melt. Add the flour and the spices and make a roux: which means that basically you stir around the spices and flour into the melted butter and let it cook a little bit over a low heat. You will start to smell the cooking flour and spices, which is what you want – never put “raw” flour into a soup or sauce. Blech.

– Take the condensed milk and add it a little bit at a time, stirring it into the roux; keep adding it a little bit at a time until it is all done. You should have a really thick sauce; if it is not “saucy” enough (not enough liquid), start adding the broth/milk from the other pan until it is. Once it is thinned down enough (it’s still going to be thick – think cheese sauce consistency), scrape that out into the pot with the potatoes and broth/milk and put that back on the heat – medium.

Add back the veggies and mashed veggies/mashed potatoes to this and heat this until it starts to bubble. It will thicken up a LOT. Turn down the heat and add the shrimp to heat through. Don’t bring this to a boil; it will make the shrimp rubbery.

Serve with bread, a salad, and you’re good to go.

And, speaking about bread – next time, we’re going to discuss “fear of being too kneady.”

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)