Breakfast Bites

Sometimes a little advance effort has a big pay-off. That’s most certainly the case with breakfast — the last thing most of us want to do first thing in the morning is spend a lot of time preparing/scrounging for something to eat. Specifically, something that will taste good, be healthy, and be satisfying enough to last until lunch. All three of those conditions are impossible to fulfill — although those with a sweet tooth would probably argue that the “tastes good” criteria would be met — with what you’ll find in the cereal aisle or the reduced-fat dairy section in most supermarkets. (Also known as the Aisle of Sugar and the Section of Sugar departments.)

If you’re willing to spend a little time making these breakfast bites while you listen to your favorite podcast, though, you won’t face a first-thing-in-the-morning crisis. With three kinds of whole grains, two seeds, eggs, extra-virgin olive oil, and natural sweeteners in the form of raisins and dates, these little guys taste great, are healthy, and won’t leave you hungry by 10 a.m. Plus, they’re bite-size and highly portable. How convenient is that?

Breakfast Bites
Makes approximately 60 bites.

1/4 cup sunflower seeds, coarsely ground in a food processor
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds, coarsely ground in a food processor
1/4 cup teff flour*
3/4 cup sorghum flour*
3/4 cup brown rice flour*
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 cup date sugar
1/2 cup raisins
3 eggs, separated
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Powdered sucanat for rolling (optional)

Preheat oven to 350F and cover 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, whisk together seeds, flours, cinnamon, baking powder, and date sugar. Stir in raisins, separating them by hand if they’re clumping together.

Crack the egg whites into a large bowl and put the yolks in another large bowl. Whip the whites with the cream of tartar — since the cream of tartar is acidic, it helps set the whites faster — until you have almost-stiff peaks (the kind that very slowly and gently starts to fall over after you’ve lifted up the beater).

Using the same beater, whip the yolks with the vanilla and oil until the mixture is frothy and thick. Stir the dry ingredients into the yolks. The dough will be dry, but that’s okay — you still have to fold in the whites. After you’ve folded them in with a spatula, start rolling the dough into 1″ balls and placing them on the baking sheets. I find that the easiest way to do that is pinch the dough together, use your fingertips to form it into a rough ball, and then give it a little finishing “polish” roll in the palm of your hand.

Bake for 12 minutes until bottoms are golden brown. If you like, roll the hot-out-of-the-oven balls in powdered sucanat to give them a little more sweetness. I do like to roll them, so I bake the bites in 2 batches — that way, I can get the first batch sucanat-ed while they’re still hot. Let bites cool completely before storing them in an airtight container.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d rather make a wheat-based version, use an equivalent of kamut, spelt, and/or whole-wheat flour.

Cheesy Scrambled Eggs & Purple Hash

Let’s not kid ourselves — the best part of the omelet is the cheese. Assuming, that is, the cheese isn’t Velveeta or anything else that calls itself “a pasteurized process cheese food.” Yep, “cheese food,” not cheese. I don’t make this stuff up, folks. Just comes down to reading the labels…

But anyway, back to the good stuff. I opted to scramble an egg with some grated Kerrygold Dubliner white Cheddar, which is a lush and savory cheese made with milk from grass-fed cows. I am a huge fan of Kerrygold cheeses and butters, and as I had suspected, that Cheddar made an incredibly savory omelet. The purple potatoes were the perfect classic-with-a-twist accompaniment. Since they’re such small potatoes to begin with, it’s a snap to cut them into a few pieces and them simmer them briefly before frying them. You could use any kind of potatoes for your hash, of course — leftover, already-cooked potatoes are the quickest to use — but I’d say the purple variety has the most visual panache. The only thing cooler than “Green Eggs & Ham” would have been “Purple Eggs & Ham.”

Cheesy Scrambled Eggs & Purple Hash

Purple potatoes
Eggs, preferably from pastured hens
Grated sharp cheese (Cheddar, Parmesan, Gruyere, any of the aged French Basque cheeses), preferably from pastured animals

Get a pot of water boiling while you cut the potatoes into bite-sized pieces. The little purple ones are so small that often all you have to do is cut them in half. Simmer potatoes for 10 minutes and drain well. Drizzle a little extra-virgin olive oil into a nonstick skillet and cook potatoes over medium heat for about 10 minutes or until they’re crispy and turning golden brown through their purpleness. Stir often to make sure they don’t stick to the pan.

While the potatoes are cooking, heat a drizzle of the oil over medium-low heat in another skillet. Add eggs and sprinkle cheese on top. Cook, stirring often, until eggs are softly scrambled and cheese is melted. That should only take about 3 minutes, particularly if you have fresh pastured eggs. If you want the potatoes and eggs to come out at precisely the same time, don’t start cooking the eggs until the potatoes are halfway done. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Cinnamon & Honey Millet Cakes

I recently prepared these millet cakes for a cooking class, and reactions ranged from “This would make a good breakfast!” to “It kind of reminds me of rice pudding…except crispy.” My thoughts exactly! I also think these cakes would make a great dessert if you topped them with ice cream and/or fresh fruit and an additional drizzle of honey. Or a dollop of whole-milk Greek yogurt with some honey and cinnamon stirred into it.

You could make grain cakes with whatever grain you have on hand: whole-grain rice (brown, red, black, purple), millet, quinoa, amaranth, even wild rice. The key is to overcook your grain of choice just a little so that it becomes stickier and can better hold its shape when formed into a patty. Using two egg whites instead of one whole egg helps the cakes stick together, too — since most of the egg’s protein is in the white, that’s the part that helps things stick together when cooked. (Then again, all of the vitamins and most of the other nutrients are found in the yolk, so it’s better to use the whole egg from a health standpoint.)

Be sure to save your yolks and use them to make ice cream, custard, or even extra-rich scrambled eggs. Fresh yolks can be refrigerated for up to 3 days if you cover them completely with cold water before stashing them on a shelf where they’ll be in prominent, unforgettable, “don’t-forget-about-me!” view.

Cinnamon & Honey Millet Cakes
Makes enough to serve 4. Recipe can be easily doubled or tripled.

2 cups cooked millet (¾ cup will yield about 2 cups cooked)
2 egg whites, preferably from pastured hens
2 T. honey
½ tsp. to 1 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. vanilla
Dash sea salt

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Heat a dab of butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until butter is melted and add millet to the pan 1/4 cup at a time, pressing the millet into the cup with your fingers and then tapping the compressed millet gently into the skillet. Press down lightly on the millet patty with a spatula to flatten it (aim for a 3” patty).

Cook for 5 minutes or until golden brown, then very carefully and gently flip over the patties. Cook another 3 minutes or until both sides are golden brown. Leftover patties keep quite deliciously in the fridge for up to 5 days.

Enjoy!

Scrambled Eggs with Wild Shrimp

One of the many wonderful things about the world of food — perhaps the most wonderful — is that the stuff that tastes the best is also the stuff that’s the best quality and the most sustainable. I’m talking grass-fed beef, eggs from pastured hens, well- managed wild seafood, etc. People who think about the needs of the animals they raise and the land they farm make the effort (and either have or develop the know-how) to produce damned tasty ingredients to put on your plate.

Take wild shrimp, for example. Wild-caught shrimp from Oregon and the U.S. Gulf of Mexico are rated “Best Choice” and “Good Alternative” respectively by the Monterey Bay Aquarium folks. Imported shrimp farmed in open systems are ranked “Avoid” since open farming contaminates ocean environments (and also doesn’t taste nearly as good). In short, what’s best for you is also best for your neighbors. And if you have one of the Aquarium’s handy Pocket Guides with you when you shop for seafood, it’s pretty easy to spot the yummy stuff. Just be sure to read the country of origin and method of production (wild/farmed; sometimes wild is best, sometimes farmed is best) to make sure you’re getting the tastiest seafood.

To make this quick breakfast, I just scrambled some eggs and with some shrimp I had already cooked and enjoyed for dinner the night before. If you don’t have already-cooked shrimp, it’s easy enough to whip some up in three minutes flat.

Scrambled Eggs with Wild Shrimp

Wild shrimp, peeled and deveined
Italian herbs (optional, but nice)
Eggs, preferably from pastured hens

Heat a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil or a dab of butter in a skillet and add shrimp and herbs. Sautée for 3 minutes over medium heat, turning the shrimp halfway through the cooking time to make sure they cook evenly on both sides. They’ll curl and turn pink when cooked. Remove from skillet and cut into smaller pieces.

Add eggs and another drizzle of oil to the skillet and cook over medium heat for 3 minutes or until eggs have cooked to your satisfaction, stirring often to evenly cook the eggs. (I like mine quite soft.) Stir in shrimp and serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Mashed Potato Cake with a Poached Egg

We’ve all been there: you made too much of a side dish and wound up with more than you could chew. Literally. So you stick it in the fridge and figure that you’ll get around to eating it eventually…but then you don’t, and you wind up pitching your grocery dollars instead of eating them. It happens to the best of us.

That nearly happened to me when I had a pot of mashed redskins in my fridge. Luckily, though, when I was pondering what to have for breakfast one night (yes, I think it about it the night before in order to facilitate the whole getting-ready-in-the-morning process), I remembered those potatoes and decided they’d make a great base for a poached egg. Moreover, I decided they’d make great mashed potato cakes upon which to perch the egg. And the best part? The cakes only take 10 minutes total, so if you time the poaching right, you’ll have piping-hot potatoes and eggs to enjoy first thing in the morning.

Mashed Potato Cake with a Poached Egg

Mashed potatoes*
Egg(s)

Shape the potatoes into hamburger-sized patties no more than 1″ thick. Heat a dab of butter over medium heat until butter is melted, then gently lay on the potato patties. Cook for 5 minutes before very carefully and very gently flipping over the patties. Add another dab of butter if the pan is dry. Cook for another 5 minutes, reducing the heat by a notch or two since now the pan will be very hot and the cooking will be in full swing. Patties should be golden brown on both sides.

While the potato cakes are cooking, bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Crack in an egg (or two) and reduce heat to medium. Stir the egg gently to make sure it isn’t sticking to the bottom of the pan. Simmer it for 3 minutes. Eggs tend to foam over as they poach, so you want to stand right by that pot and keep an eye on it for those 3 minutes. The goal is a gently simmer the egg, not boil it — you may need to reduce the heat to medium-low or even low. Skim any rising foam off the top and discard it so that it doesn’t splash onto the stove and make a hard-to-clean mess.

Remove poached egg from water with a slotted spoon and place on top of the potato cake. Garnish with herbs and/or cracked black pepper if desired.

Enjoy!

* To mash potatoes, cut potatoes — in this case, redskins — into 1″ cubes and simmer them for 10 minutes. Drain well and mash with whatever extras you’d like: a pat of butter, a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, a soft cheese such as ricotta or goat, some snipped chives, a dash of dried herbs, etc. I mashed mine with some sauteéd garlic and chopped parsley.

Strawberry-Oat Smoothie

It’s true: oatmeal makes a great breakfast. But not the flavored, sugared, powdery instant oats that are more chemicals and sweeteners than they are oats. Plain, old-fashioned rolled oats are a much better choice…and you can flavor them any way you want! You could even cook a giant batch once or twice a week and then enjoy “instant” oatmeal whenever the mood strikes you. (Or cook a big batch of steel-cut oats or even oat groats, which is the whole un-steel-cut grain.)

For my breakfast earlier in the week, I had some strawberries that needed to be eaten and a handy bag of rolled oats. I could have opted for sliced berries stirred into cooked oats, of course, but I thought it would be interesting to see what a shake made with oats would be like. The answer? With their thickening power, oats make the ideal shake. And it’s easy enough to make the shake dairy-free if you’d like: just simmer the oats in water rather than milk. So simple! This is a surprisingly hearty and satisfying smoothie to enjoy first thing in the morning or even on the way to work.

Strawberry-Oat Smoothie

Blend cooked plain rolled oats with a handful of organic strawberries* in a blender. (To make a single serving, I cooked 1/4 cup raw oats and tossed in about 9 strawberries.) Add 1 T. maple syrup and a dash of vanilla extract and blend again. If the smoothie is too thick and is refusing to blend to a smooth consistency, trickle in cold water and keep blending until you have a milkshake-like smoothie. Note that this idea of cooked oats + fruit would work with any fruit that’s soft enough to blend. Banana-oat, blueberry-oat, peach-oat…the possibilities are endless!

* Seeing as strawberries are one of the most-sprayed crops on the U.S. market and we eat the whole fruit, they’re worth buying organic.

Enjoy!

Orange Segments Topped with Crème Fraîche & Cocoa Nibs

Having just returned from a fascinating — and tasty! — culinary conference in NYC, real food has been very much on my mind. (Although, to be honest, real food is always on my mind. Chalk it up to one of the occupational hazards of being a recipe developer/food writer. In terms of “hazards,” it’s got to be one of the most pleasant.) By “real food,” I’m talking minimally processed foods: grains that are whole, oils that are unrefined, sweeteners that still retain their nutrients, animal products from pastured animals…you get the idea.

Speaking of the pastured animal foods, one of my current favorite dairy products is crème fraîche. It’s still unpopular and un-mainstream enough to be produced by real farms with animals freely grazing. The animals’ state of good health = dairy, egg, and meat products for us that taste damned good and also happen to be the most nutritious. (In case you’re curious about the numbers, pastured animal products have about half the fat of conventional animal products. Pastured also offers higher amounts of anti-inflammatory omega 3 fats and far more vitamins and other micronutrients than conventional products do.)

Along with being produced by great dairyists like Vermont Creamery, crème fraîche is also a cultured dairy product, which means it offers an intriguing tang along with its rich creaminess. It pairs beautifully with everything from fruit to potatoes! The nibs in this recipe add a nice crunch to the juicy orange and creamy/tangy crème fraîche.

Orange Segments Topped with Crème Fraîche & Cocoa Nibs

Peel oranges and gently pull apart into segments. Arrange in a bowl or on a plate and top with a dollop of crème fraîche. Sprinkle with cocoa nibs or broken-up chunks of dark chocolate. (When I say “dark,” I mean at least 75%. The sweetness of the orange is all the sweeter when paired with not-so-sweet chocolate.) Serve immediately for breakfast, dessert, or a snack. If you’d like to experiment with other fruit + crème fraîche combinations, try making Strawberries & Crème.

Enjoy!

Medium-Boiled Eggs on Paprika-Dusted Brown Rice

Pastured eggs are my favorite ingredient for several reasons: they’re an integral part of sweet and savory dishes, they’re ideal to enjoy any time of day, and they provide essential structure for everything from baked goods to velvety sauces. You just can’t beat an egg when it comes to artistry AND functionality! The fact that they can be prepared in such a variety of ways — nearly all of which take less than 10 minutes — makes them all the more appealing.

But although poached eggs get my #1 vote, their glaring disadvantage is that they’re one of those make-it-and-eat-it-NOW dishes. Specifically, with a fork, a plate, and an unfolded napkin at the ready. Soft-boiled eggs have a similar constraint since they also tend to have runny yolks. (Which to me is the best part! If you have the space and the resources, messy is fun.) The [lack of] Messy Factor makes hard-boiled eggs the most convenient egg option when you want to make enough eggs to have leftovers or have some to take them along with you as a traveling snack.

Lately, I’ve been playing with the length of the boiling time — I want to see how soft I can get the yolks to be without them being messy. The ideal time seems to be 8 minutes. With 8 minutes of boiling, I get yolks that are verging on runny and are decidedly soft and still dark-orange/dark-yellow in color (as opposed to the much more pale yellow of a fully hard-boiled egg) but don’t try to sneak out of their whites when you cut them in half. If you have a napkin handy and are planning on eating your eggs promptly, though, you can boil them for an even briefer 5 minutes and have soft-boiled eggs.

Medium-Boiled Eggs on Paprika-Dusted Brown Rice
You can make as many servings of this as you like. One egg and 1/2 cup cooked rice would typically be one serving.

Eggs, preferably from pastured hens
Cooked brown rice, either long- or short-grain (I tend to cook my brown rice for 15 minutes fewer than the package instructions indicate since I like my rice on the chewy side)
Sweet paprika

Place your eggs in a pot and cover with water and a lid. Bring water to a boil while paying close attention to the pot. As soon as you hit a boil, reduce heat to medium, set the timer for 8 minutes, and tilt the lid slightly. Lower heat another notch if the eggs are bumping around violently inside the pot. (The smaller the pot, the more they’ll be tossed around in there.)

While the eggs are cooking, place the cooked brown rice on a plate (or on plates) and sprinkle with sweet paprika.

As soon as the 8 minutes are up, place pot under the tap and run cold water into the pot, tilting it to allow the hot water to spill out and be replaced with the cold water. Crack the shells of the eggs you’re going to use right away and peel them, then cut in half and place on top of the rice. Leftover eggs should be left in the pot to cool — with their shells still on — until they’re completely chilled. You can refrigerate them for up to 5 days.

Season your not-so-hard-boiled eggs with a little sea salt and freshly cracked pepper and serve as a breakfast, lunch, or snack.

Enjoy!

Almond Butter & Banana Smoothie

With its focus on nuts and fresh fruit (and coconuts and fresh herbs), I’ve long been a fan of raw food. Every raw dish I’ve ever had has been delicious and innovative. Vegan dishes are tasty, too, but unfortunately vegans seem to rely overmuch on soy and wheat products. I’m not a big fan of soy for a variety of reasons — ranging from health issues to environmental ones — and I avoid gluten, so lots of otherwise-interesting vegan dishes are out for me. Raw food, on the other hand, doesn’t use soy or wheat or anything processed…which means it’s always innovative, always fresh, and always scrumptious.

I’ve been wanting to make more raw dishes at home (especially raw desserts, which are unbelievably good!), but I don’t have a Vitamix and probably won’t any time soon. My trusty Cuisinart food processor just isn’t powerful enough to rip through damned near anything the way a Vitamix can.  (I seriously think you could powder diamonds with one of those.) Chopping nuts and grinding them into coarse meal works in some settings, but raw dishes often call for silky-smooth nuts as a main ingredient.

About a week ago, I finally had a “duh!” moment and hit upon a solution to my sans-Vitamix-but-want-raw-food dilemma: use raw nut butter! Nowadays, you can find everything from almond butter to walnut butter to cashew butter. If you’re lucky, you might even stumble upon jars of macadamia butter sitting next to jars of pecan butter. They all have different flavors, of course, but what they all have in common is that their textures all fall somewhere between velvet and satin. I might still splurge on a Vitamix someday, but in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy experimenting with already-made-smooth nut butters. They make anything taste incredibly creamy and rich.

Almond Butter & Banana (or any other fruit) Smoothie

Note: since nut butters are highly perishable, store them in the refrigerator as soon as you get them home. If you are fortunate enough to have a Vitamix or other warp-speed blender/processor, you can make your own nut butters by grinding shelled nuts until they’re smooth. You may wish to add a matching unrefined oil to give the butter a little more creaminess. (Use unrefined almond oil with almonds, unrefined walnut oil with walnuts, etc.)

Place a heaping tablespoon of almond butter and either 1 full-sized banana or 2 small ones (I prefer the little guys) in a blender. If you use a large banana, break it into three or four pieces before adding it. Add 1 tsp. maple syrup and 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Pour in enough cool water to barely cover everything and blend on high until smooth. You can add a few ice cubes if you’d like more froth and coolness.

Enjoy!

Pumpkin-Chestnut Waffles

I don’t often post recipes that involve special equipment, but these pumpkin waffles were far too delicious not to share with fellow waffle iron owners. If you don’t already have an iron, perhaps knowing that there’s a lovely (and whole-grain!) Belgian waffle recipe out there will spur you into picking up that still-in-the-box, never-used waffle maker when you’re hitting garage sales this spring.

The trick of making fluffy waffles that don’t tear apart when you open the waffle maker is to pour a full cup of batter into the maker before you close the two halves and let the waffle cook into its signature crannies and crenellations. That’s just as important as the more obvious precaution of thoroughly greasing the waffle maker before you pour in the batter. (Both of these elements are exponentially more important if you’re making gluten-free waffles since they’re much more likely to tear apart when you open the waffle maker.)

If your waffle iron is the kind that rotates 180 degrees, that’s even better — then you can make sure that both halves of the maker are well-greased before pouring in the batter. If your maker isn’t flippable, use a heat-safe barbecue brush to “paint” both halves with melted butter or coconut oil.

Pumpkin-Chestnut Waffles
Because these are true Belgian-style, only-raised-with-yeast waffles, they need to sit overnight for the yeast to have a chance to flavor and puff the batter. Simply whisk together the batter the night before rather than in the morning. I prefer to make waffles this way, anyway, because this approach means a lot less work in the morning when you want to make your breakfast with a minimum of effort.

3/4 cup mashed pumpkin, either canned or freshly baked and then mashed
1 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
1/4 cup melted butter (1/2 stick), preferably from grass-fed cows
4 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 cup brown rice flour*
3/4 cup chestnut flour*
3/4 cup sorghum OR millet flour*
1 T. yeast
1/2 tsp. sea salt

Whisk together pumpkin, milk, butter, and eggs until well-blended, then whisk in remaining ingredients. Cover and refrigerate overnight. The next morning, heat your Belgian waffle maker until the “ready” light is on (or whatever happens when your waffle maker has reached the desired heat). While the iron is heating, whisk your batter briefly; it will have puffed up overnight due to the presence of the yeast.

Place a little scoop of coconut oil or a dab of butter in the center of each of the four quarters of the bottom half of the maker. Close and flip over to grease the other half. If your iron doesn’t rotate, use a heat-proof brush to brush both halves with the oil or butter. The idea is to have a well-greased waffle iron.

Pour 1 full cup of batter into the waffle maker, flip over if you can, and cook for as long as the manufacturer’s instructions indicate for your desired setting. (For mine, it takes about 5 minutes to cook to a lovely golden brown.) You might wish to flip it back over halfway through the cook time. Carefully use a heat-proof spatula and a fork to lift the cooked waffle out of the maker and onto a waiting plate. Add more oil or butter to the iron before making the next waffle. Recipe makes about 4 waffles.

I like to top my waffles with maple syrup and either pecan or walnut oil — the pumpkin is particularly nice with nuts. Or sprinkle toasted nuts on top of your waffle with perhaps some fresh fruit or freshly whipped cream.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you would prefer to make wheat-based waffles, use a total of 2 1/2 cups of spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flour.

Cinnamon-Maple Yogurt with Blueberries & Cooca Nibs

Plenty of “convenience” foods are far more convenient to make yourself — while the commercial versions tend to have unpronounceable ingredient lists and a mind-boggling amount of sugars/sweeteners, you can whip up a homemade version with a few simple healthy ingredients…and in less than a minute. Sixty seconds spent preparing AND at least 30 minutes saved by not going to the store? Now, that’s convenience! And using ingredients you already have vs. spending more money on an inferior product = thrifty (and smart) convenience.

Flavored yogurts fall into the “Prime Candidates for DIY Convenient Foods” category. If you keep a container of full-fat plain Greek yogurt in your fridge, you can enjoy the same yogurt innumerable ways by simply stirring in a few extra ingredients. Plus, when you have plain yogurt, you can even go sweet or savory without having to spend extra money. Use it as a basis for creamy salad dressings (use the yogurt in place of oil), as a way to enrich curries and soups (remove the pan or pot from the heat and stir in the yogurt at the last minute to keep it from curdling), or as a substitute for sour cream (to me, full-fat plain Greek yogurt tastes richer and fresher than sour cream does). And remember that fresh herbs make a wonderful companion to yogurt.

To go the sweet route, you can stir everything from spices to jam into your yogurt. For this batch, I opted to go with cinnamon, maple syrup, fresh blueberries, and a sprinkling of cocoa nibs. Any fruit would work, though, and you can use any sweetener you like, from honey to palm sugar to date sugar. Let your imagination run (conveniently) wild!

Cinnamon-Maple Yogurt with Blueberries & Cocoa Nibs

Plain full-fat Greek yogurt
Drizzle of maple syrup
Sprinkling of cinnamon
Fresh blueberries (or any other fruit)
Cocoa nibs (optional, but adds an appealing chocolate crunch)

Use a fork or a small whisk to stir the maple syrup and cinnamon into the yogurt. Gently stir in blueberries and top with nibs. Note that any fruit would be lovely — just be sure to cut the fruit into bite-sized pieces before stirring it in. Or you could dip larger-sized fruit slices into the yogurt.

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Walnut Bread

What’s in your freezer pantry? The space adjoining your fridge is just as useful and important as your cupboard shelves. Stashing away frozen fruits and veggies is a great way to make sure you always have a good stock of otherwise-perishable ingredients on hand, plus it’s far more tasty and economical to freeze your own leftover dinners rather than buying prefabricated frozen meals. (And just think: if you only scrawl the date and not the contents onto your leftovers, you can give yourself a happy culinary surprise at a later date. You’re guaranteed to like what you’re getting because you already enjoyed it the first time around — it’s like going to your favorite restaurant and telling the waiter “Surprise me!”)

One of the best ingredients to keep in the freezer is nuts. While chestnuts and almonds have a relatively low fat content and are therefore less perishable than other nuts, richer nuts like walnuts and pecans and pine nuts can turn rancid in just a month or two when stored at room temp.  The fact that walnuts and pecans are often sold in pieces or halves — i.e., their protective outer skins have been breached — makes them even more prone to rancidity. If you store the more delicate varieties of nuts in the freezer, though, they’ll easily last a year. (Side note: always store nut butters in the fridge! Cool temps will keep them fresher, and they’ll still be spreadable straight out of the fridge.)

This hearty breakfast quick bread takes advantage of the natural affinity pumpkin has for walnuts. If you’d like even more walnut flavor, feel free to dry-toast the walnuts in a pan over medium-low heat for about 4 minutes or until the they’re fragrant and browning before adding them to the batter.

I like to amp up the walnut aspect by drizzling some unrefined walnut oil onto my slices when I enjoy the baked bread. (Since walnut oil is primarily an polyunsaturated fat, it should NOT be heated and is therefore NOT suitable for baking. It is, however, fabulous when whisked into dressings and/or drizzled over finished dishes. It’s also a good source of omega-3 fats.)

Pumpkin Walnut Bread

3/4 cup brown rice flour*
3/4 cup sorghum OR millet flour*
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. coriander (optional, but a nice background flavor)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (toasted if you like)
1/2 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
3 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 cup puréed pumpkin (either homemade or canned)

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9×5 glass loaf pan by either rubbing its sides with butter or extra-virgin olive oil.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking soda and powder, spices, and walnuts. In another bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Pour the liquid mixture into the flour mixture and whisk well to combine.

Pour the batter into the greased loaf pan and bake for 1 hour or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. I usually flip on the oven light to peek at the loaf at the 55-minute mark just to do a quick visual check. If the center still looks soggy and un-set, let it go another 10 minutes before doing a toothpick test. If it’s set and slightly domed, do the toothpick test right away.

Let bread cool on a wire rack for at least 15 minutes before cutting into it. Bread will keep for several days at room temp in the cool winter months, but if it’s summertime or you keep your house toasty warm in the winter, you might want to pop the bread into the fridge to prolong its life. I prefer to leave mine out since the fridge has a tendency to suck the moisture out of baked goods and make them a bit dry. (And I am too thrifty to heat the house past 68F in the winter.)

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d prefer to make a wheat-based version, use a total of 1 1/2 cups spelt, kamut, and/or whole-wheat flour.

Crustless Pecan Pie

What do chestnuts, pecans, beech nuts, and hickory nuts all have in common? They’re all native to North America. While beech nuts and hickory nuts are hard to find since they’re usually foraged rather than farmed, chestnuts and pecans are relatively plentiful. Roasted chestnuts are especially findable around the holidays. (Although this Flourless Chocolate Chestnut Cake is delicious any time of the year.) Pecans, on the other hand, are findable year-round.

Where chestnuts are starchy and dry in nature — which makes them excellent in baked goods when dried and ground into flour — pecans are rich and buttery. That satisfying flavor and the high protein/fat content of pecans makes them an ideal ingredient for breakfasts that’ll stick with you all the way to lunch. (As opposed to sugary, refined cereals that will leave you feeling hungry and irritable by mid-morning and will have you reaching for more sugary junk to make it to lunch time. Break the cycle deliciously!)

Soaking the pecans, draining them, and then roasting them overnight will make them insanely buttery-tasting and isn’t very much work seeing as all of those steps are pretty passive: once you have the nuts situated, they can simply do their thing. But you can pan-toast the pecans at the last minute, too, if you want to skip the overnight soak. I think it’s much easier to do hands-off activities like soaking and roasting rather than pay-attention activities like toasting in a pan. (The more oily and buttery the nut, the more likely it is to over-toast and wind up burnt.) How you deal with your nuts is up to you.

Crustless Pecan Pie

8 oz. raw pecan halves (6 oz. or even 4 oz. would also work; I happen to be a nut about pecans and wanted to make a very pecan-y pecan pie)
1 T. sea salt (which sounds like a lot, but you’ll wind up rinsing most of it away)
6 dates, pitted and chopped
1/4 cup maple syrup
4 T. butter (half a stick), preferably from grass-fed cows
3 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
2 tsp. vanilla

The night before, place the pecans and salt in a small bowl and add enough cold water to cover the nuts. Leave them sit out on the counter overnight. The following day, rinse well and let drain for at least 5 minutes. Preheat oven to 200F. Spread the drained pecans out on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes or until the pecans are dry and brittle and break apart easily. (When they start to smell magnificently of roasting nuts, start checking them. This is the most enchanting scent ever — not even baking bread can beat it!) When the pecans are done, increase the heat to 350F.

Get out a 9″ glass pie pan. Place the dates, maple syrup, and butter in a small saucepan and heat over medium-low until the butter is melted. Raise the heat up a notch or two until the mixture is gently bubbling. Let simmer for 3 minutes, then remove from heat and whisk in eggs and vanilla. Whisk in the pecans. You can hand-break them into smaller bits or you can leave them as whole halves. I like the texture and look of the halves, so I do my best to keep them intact.

Pour the batter into the ungreased pie pan and bake for 30 minutes at 350F. Let baked pie cool at least 15 minutes before cutting into it. Leftover pie can be refrigerated for up to 5 days.

Talk about the most lush breakfast imaginable! Especially when you consider that if you serve it in 4 generous portions (one-quarter of the pie makes a lasts-well-until-lunch breakfast), each portion only has 1 T. of maple syrup and 1 T. of butter. It doesn’t take much to play up pecans!

Enjoy!

Buckwheat Crepes with Chocolate Yogurt

One of the many beauties of crepes is that you can fill them with whatever you like, whether that’s sweet or savory or something in between. And by varying the kind of flour you use to make the crepes themselves, you can tweak their base flavor to suit your mood. Want a nutty, rich-tasting crepe? Use teff, buckwheat, or chestnut flour. How about a mild crepe that would work with any filling? Try brown rice, sorghum, millet, or corn flour. For a decidedly savory crepe, go with chickpea or potato flour. In a chocolate kind of mood? Use unsweetened cocoa powder as one of your flours…and maybe throw in some coconut, too. Mesquite flour lends crepes a caramel flair; plantain has a hint of the tropics. Your options are endless.

Although I often make savory crepes intended for lunch wraps and chutney roll-ups, I made these for breakfast and filled them with chocolate yogurt and some blackberry jam. The whole-grain-ness of the crepe + the protein-rich whole-milk yogurt makes for a deliciously satisfying breakfast…and you can make both elements ahead of time and simply roll them at the last minute. Quick breakfasts can be classy and easy!

Buckwheat Crepes with Chocolate Yogurt
This crepe recipe makes about 12 crepes; the yogurt is enough for 2 servings. Feel free to downsize the crepe portions or upsize the yogurt portions as desired. I like to make a full batch of the crepes so that I have some leftovers to enjoy however I like.

For the crepes:
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup buckwheat flour*
1 1/2 cups whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
Dash of sea salt
Butter or ghee for cooking the crepes, preferably from grass-fed cows

For the chocolate yogurt:
1/2 cup whole-milk plain Greek yogurt (Fage is my favorite)
2 T. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 T. maple syrup

To make the crepes, whisk all of the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Get out a (or two or three) 7″ nonstick crepe pan and place a dab of butter in the pan. Heat over medium heat — I go with mark 4 out of 10 on my electric burners — until butter has melted and is sizzling. Pour in 1/4 cup of the crepe batter and cook for 2-3 minutes or until crepe is set on top and browned on the bottom. Use a heatproof spatula to flip over the crepe and cook the second side for another minute or two or until equally browned. If you’re adventurous, by all means go ahead and flip that sucker up into the air to turn it over. Just don’t do that directly over the burner! It’s much easier to rescue a misdirected crepe from a cool element than a hot burner.

Place the cooked crepe on a wire rack. (If you put it on a plate, it’ll collect condensation and get soggy.) Make a second crepe in the same pan using the same technique. I find that I have to put a fresh dab of butter into my crepe pan every other crepe to keep them from sticking. Leftover crepes can be stacked in a sealed container and refrigerated for a week.

To make the yogurt, use a fork to thoroughly mix the ingredients in a bowl. Leftover yogurt can be kept up until the “expires by” date on the original package.

When you’re ready to assemble your chocolate-filled crepe, just spoon some yogurt onto the center of the crepe, roll up, and enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d prefer to make wheat-based crepes, substitute 1 total cup of spelt, kamut, and/or whole-wheat flours for the brown rice and buckwheat.

Blackberry Surprise Muffins

February may have turned into April overnight (44F? Weather gods, what is going on??), but there’s still enough of a chill in the air to warrant baking muffins. Especially whole-grain muffins with a jammy surprise inside. I opted for locally made, naturally sweetened blackberry jam for this batch; next time I might go for raspberry or cherry. That’s the great thing about making “surprise” muffins: as long as you can come up with different treats to tuck inside the batter, you can keep reinventing your recipes! Other fun surprises include dollops of nut butter and chunks of dark chocolate.

If you are going for a jammy surprise, though, make sure to pick an all-fruit jam, not one that has a bunch of added sugar and/or high-fructose corn syrup. Always, always read the ingredients label! You can save yourself a lot of headache and heartache by skipping all of the misleading claims and marketing flimflam on the front of any given package and going right to the ingredients label. If you don’t like what you see there, put it back and go on to the next brand…and possibly the next one…until you find an appealing list of ingredients.

Blackberry Surprise Muffins

3/4 cup brown rice flour*
3/4 cup sorghum OR millet flour*
1/2 cup almond flour (I run sliced almonds through a coffee grinder until I have flour; this is a far more affordable — and tastier! — way to enjoy almond flour)
1 T. baking powder
Dash of sea salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows, OR coconut, grain, or nut milk
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp. vanilla
Blackberry jam

Preheat oven to 375F and line a muffin tin with paper cups. This recipe tends to make at least a baker’s dozen, so you may need to line a few openings in a second tin. Get out a small spoon to use for scooping the jam into the muffins right before you pop them into the oven.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, maple syrup, oil, and vanilla. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ones.

Promptly fill each cup in the full 12-cup tin halfway with batter. (If you are using aluminum-free baking powder — which I always do — time is of the essence since the powder will immediately start to react when mixed with liquid. Now is not the time to tarry!) Use your tiny spoon to scoop a dollop of jam into each muffin. Add a little more batter to each cup, enough to cover the jam and fill the cup 3/4 full. If you still have some batter, make another 3 or 4 muffins in the second tin.

Bake for 20 minutes or until the muffins are turning golden on top and a toothpick inserted along the side comes out clean. (If you poke the center of the muffin, you’ll hit the jam and the toothpick will come out sticky.) Let cool for at least 10 minutes before biting into your surprise.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d rather make wheat-based muffins, use a total of 1 1/2 cups spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flours. You could replace the almond flour with wheat, too, but the nuttiness of the almonds is a nice compliment to the tart-sweetness of the blackberry jam.