Sunday morning breakfast: Oat pancakes

I've made oat pancakes plenty of times, but this time they turned out perfectly, so here, my gift to you, dear reader.

The proportions of ingredients were inspired by the wonderfully useful Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Cookbook.

Ingredients:

2 cups of rolled oats or oat flour; or 1 cup of unbleached white wheat flour and 1 cup of oats

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp kosher salt

1 tbl sugar. I used brown but any can be used. It can also be omitted.

2 large eggs

2 cups buttermilk

3 tbl melted butter or vegetable oil

Method

If you are using oats, put them in a food processor and pulse until the consistency of whole wheat flour. This also works in some blenders. Either way, whatever flours you are using, when they are ready, put them in a large mixing bowl. While you're at it, melt the butter.

Add the baking powder, soda, and salt. incorporate thoroughly (i like a whisk for this).

Make a well in the middle. crack the eggs into it and whisk the eggs until mixed and lightened. add the butter and buttermilk. Mix with the eggs briefly, then finish mixing it with the surrounding flour.  Obligatory "batter will be lumpy." Let it rest for about ten minutes or until many air bubbles are formed. This helps make the pancakes light.

I use a stovetop griddle for making cakes, and a flexible metal flipper. I also prefer a small ladle for portioning. You know the drill: set the burner to medium, make sure the surface is prepared (either brush with butter or oil, or use nonstick); wait until it has come to temp, and don't crowd. When plentiful bubbles have formed, flip.

I served them with real maple syrup and simple strawberry sauce Abbey made the day before. I'm proud to say the kids inhaled them- a sure sign of pancake success.

Update: today I made the same recipe with a couple of variations:

I used all white whole wheat flour, and added the same amount of buttermilk. the result was a batter more like dough.

Then, I added soy milk to thin it to batter consistency- about 1/2 cup.

I used only one egg.

Results were every bit as good. So if you are cutting calories, you might consider trying this.

Chili in a Pinch

Might as well blog this one, too. We decided at the last minute to have a cookout in the back yard, and the requested entree was chili.  I said ok because we had a little less than a pound of ground beef left unused from another meal. Everyone was singing its praises, so I present it here.

Ingredients:

a pound of ground beef- i actually used .75 lbs of ground sirloin.
1 large can of tomato sauce
about a cup of beef broth
one medium or large onion, diced
a small can of red enchilada sauce
two cans of mild chili beans, with sauce
1 tbl ground cumin
1 tbl smoked paprika
i tsp dried oregano
salt and pepper

in a dutch oven or similar heavy pot, start sauteing the onion in a tbl olive oil. Add the ground beef right after. after a few minutes add the cumin, paprika and oregano. cook until the onion is soft. then add the tomato sauce, enchilada sauce and beef broth. simmer for 15 minutes.

Couldn't be more simple.

Emergency Corn Bread blog post

I'm posting this because I just totally winged a loaf of corn bread.

I'll come back and delete it if the bread was bad. :-)

Dry ingredients:

-an ample cup of white unbleached flour
-3/4 cup of white corn meal
-two tsp baking powder
-1 tsp baking soda
-1tsp salt
-1tbl sugar

wet ingredients:

2 eggs
cup of buttermilk
1/3 cup coconut oil

I preheated to 375 F.

I mixed the dry ingredients.

I melted the coconut oil, then mixed the wet ingredients.

i mixed the two JUST until mixed, and let it sit for five minutes.

I buttered a cake pan, then plopped the rather thick mix in. In it went.

TTFN

Family cooking together / try something new night!

We've been making the kids watch Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. I say "make,"
but they don't need much convincing. We turn it on and they all seem pretty interested in it. There have been several scenes of Jamie and the citizens of Huntington preparing what could be the same dish, a beef, vegetable and noodle stir-fry. I can't be entirely sure as details are not discussed at length, but I think it might be the same dish featured on Jamie's site here. Anyway, after a couple of episodes of this, we were all ready to have something like it for dinner ourselves; tonight we gave it a try as a family.

Bryce, our 8 year old son, is really into cooking right now, which is making meal preparation a lot more fun nowadays, But Olivia, 6, and Louis, 12, were both anxious to get in on the action tonight as well. Bryce took his best crack and thinly slicing garlic, but found it requires more patience than he realized. Still, he did a fine job. He did generously let me finish chopping the veg, though. Broccolini and snow peas were looking good at the store, so we used those in addition to the peppers and instead of bean sprouts and baby corn, which didn't sound good to everyone anyway. The noodles were yakisoba, found with the tofu in the supermarket and perfect for the purpose.

Olivia was mainly interested in stirring things, and Louis was given a management position. I delegated guiding the stir fry of the vegetables to him while I got noodles and plates in order. Everyone helped to reintegrate the ingredients for the home stretch and get it into a serving bowl.

Everyone served themselves, and I was pleased to see even the most picky trying the broccolini, not new to everyone but quite alien to at least two of us. In the end the whole massive dish was history, except for a couple of pieces of beef that I saved for Milo. I think it's interesting if a kid has some investment in the process, they are a lot more likely to try something new, which is why we try both at the same time. It's a great bonding activity as well, not to mention passing on skills the kids will have an opportunity to use all of their lives.

Pizza and Monster Trucks

 

After lunch, Olivia and I felt like making a nice big nasty mess in the kitchen, so we got out the flour, the yeast, the measuring cups and went all crazy.  The intention on Saturdays has been to plan some kind of "themed" entertainment.  For example, last Saturday, we watched a Jackie Chan movie and ordered in Chinese.  This weekend, I thought, wouldn't it be fun to make pizza and watch some metal crunching monster truck action?  So, Michael was in charge of finding some monster truck-a-thon insanity for our viewing pleasure while Olivia and I got the pizza dough rolling--so to speak.

I won't say the crust turned out exactly as planned, but it was satisfactory for a crust that was mostly made with whole grains.  Our toppings were delicious and healthy--the modern twin wonders of chicken sausage and turkey pepperoni.  And for the grown-ups, the additional pleasures of mushrooms, spinach, red peppers, and mascarpone cheese.  Delicioso!  The kids loved it, and they really loved the vintage 1980's monster truck footage their dad treated them to while they ate!

What follows is a play by play of our dough making efforts, with Miss Olivia in charge.

Proofed yeast in a Pyrex measuring cup.  We used a total of 2 1/2 cups of water, a dash of sugar, and Hodgson Mill's yeast made especially for whole grains.

Miss O.diligently mixing all the flours together.  We used two cups of whole wheat, two cups of whole grain oat flour and two cups of all-purpose white flour.

A 6-year-old's hand full of kosher salt seemed like the proper measure.

  

Pouring in our liquid and proofed yeast.

She counted slowly to six while pouring in the olive oil.

Mom was left to finish the kneading process.  (Miss O's arms got really super tired!)

And here is the fruit of our labors.  The kids had a plainer version with just the turkey pepperoni and the chicken sausage.  A fine accompaniment to any monster truck rally.