Bread from Beard for Breakfast

For breakfast, I had some homemade bread with butter and boysenberry preserves, and some coffee.



I ran out of white whole wheat flour a few days ago, so I'm trying to get rid of all the weird, adventurous flours I have on hand before I buy more. Specifically, I have graham flour and dark rye flour on hand. I decided to tackle the graham flour first, with Beard on Bread's graham bread recipe.

Graham flour, interestingly, is just normal whole-wheat flour milled differently. Instead of being milled whole, the wheat is separated into endosperm, bran, and germ, and milled to different degrees of fineness before being re-mixed. Stupidly, I somehow expected it to taste like graham crackers. It did not. But it turned out reasonably well.




My only complaint is the overwhelming smell of fermentation my bread always has. Sort of boozy. I've heard it's from too much yeast, or too much time rising? Next time, I want to try the overnight refrigerator rise that bread bakers advocate for more developed, nuanced flavors.

Regardless, I added some butter (not Cabot's, needless to say), and boysenberry preserves from TJ's, and it became delicious.

The coffee is TJ's pinon blend. I still don't like it, but it's almost gone. I can't wait, so I can buy some beans from Northwest Coffee instead.

Indian Food at Home

For dinner, I had awadhi aloo mutter with basmati rice and tofu. I also had some kale on the side and a walnut, chocolate, and butterscotch chip cookie for dessert.

Aloo mutter is potatoes and peas seasoned with turmeric, coriander, and chili powder. This particular one was vacuum-packed from Kohinoor. We've had them sitting around for years, and are trying desperately to eat them all before they expire. Unfortunately, the one I ate tonight expired in April. It was so spicy, I couldn't tell. The basmati (thank you, rice cooker) and soft tofu made it more interesting, and blunted the heat a little.

The kale was prepared using this recipe I couldn't wait to try. Baking the kale at such intense heat has the effect of oven-frying the leaves into delicious garlicky bar snacks. It's simple and awesome, but beware: it makes eating a pound of kale in one sitting very, very easy.

Finally, the cookies. After much internet soul-searching and cookbook-scouring, I decided to go retro and use the famous Toll House recipe printed on the bag of chocolate chips, which I hadn't made in perhaps fifteen years. I balked at the cup of butter and teaspoon of salt it contained, and compromised by baking only half a batch. A moment of weakness befell me at the grocery store, so I had a bag of butterscotch chips to contend with as well. Butterscotch chips are synthetic little blobs of vegetable fat (in this case, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil), but I have sick nostalgia for them. I ended up using this butter/oil blend instead of all butter, white whole wheat flour (my new favorite thing) instead of ordinary flour, and a blend of chocolate and butterscotch chips, along with walnut pieces. The cookies turned out perfectly, but I never realized quite how bad Toll House's recipe is for you.

Pursuant to my grocery store critiques: today I went to Schnucks (yes, Schnucks), the local grocery store. Their veggie selection was as good as, or better than, both Whole Foods AND Trader Joe's. Also cheaper. Also approximately the same amount of organics. I'd love to know why WF here can't seem to find decent produce in this town. From now on, I'll be making the trek to Schnucks for produce, at least until I find a good Mexican grocery store a la Avanza.

The bonus? When I was accosted by a woman in the checkout line about the squash I was buying- how much she loves it, asking me for cooking tips. She came across as sweet, if overly friendly and a little eccentric, until I looked into her shopping cart. 2pm, and her only purchase was a very large bottle of vodka. Interesting.

Smorgasboard for Lunch

Today for lunch, I had a little bit of everything- some steak, some quasi-chicken picatta, green beans, scalloped potato casserole, a roll, a brownie, and some iced tea.

All this culinary excitement was caused by a CLE (continuing lawyer education) course at school. Turns out, lawyers demand better food than the pizza-or-Chipolte conundrum faced by student organizations. I was very surprised at the good quality of food, particularly the steak and the potato casserole. The steak was a perfect medium rare and tender, individually hand-sliced by some poor catering guy. The potatoes tasted like some little old Southern lady's home cooking. The potato flavor was prominent and woodsy, with perhaps six pounds of butter and cheese melted in between the layers...I could eat that for weeks. Everything else was just ok; the chicken picatta was pretty sad, although I was impressed they actually put capers in it (and red pepper? weird). The brownies were clearly not from Chick-Fil-A, but tasted like they were. It was a nice meal, and an interesting afternoon diversion, mortgage crisis lecture notwithstanding.

Butter Makes Everything Better

For dinner, I had crab meat with purple sticky rice, rosemary sourdough bread, and a glass of viognier(!!!).

Steamed and pre-packaged crab meat is awesome. Not as expensive as fresh fish, but very tasty covered in butter, and super-easy to heat up. It smelled slightly funky, but tasted great. Chalk it up to the sodium benzoate preservative, at least until I wake up vomiting in the middle of the night...

My love affair with the rice cooker continues, but I wanted something a little healthier than refined basmati rice. Whole Foods had a few interesting varieties- Himalayan red rice, Canadian wild rice (pricey!), and my final choice, the aforementioned purple sticky rice. I think it's supposed to be used in Thai desserts or something, but it was nice by itself, covered with some butter and salt. The texture was not as horrifically grainy as brown rice, but nicely chewy and fragrant. Complimented with some toasted rosemary sourdough with butter, the meal was very easy and yummy.

To make dinner even better, I actually found a reasonably priced vionier! It is my favorite summery wine, after vinho verdes, and always amazing with seafood. This one was under $10, from Loredona Vineyards in California. It's pretty nicely balanced, although I'd like it better a bit leaner and drier. The flavors reminded me of Ironstone Vineyard's Symphony, an amazing wine in its own right (symphony being a grape variety developed in mid-century California), although Symphony is very, very sweet.