Bannock

Buttermilk Oatmeal Bannock Bread

3 cups oat flour 

2 1/4 tsp xanthan gum

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

3 tbsp oat bran

3 tbsp oat meal

1/4 cup ghee

1/4 cup coconut oil

3/4 to 1 cup buttermilk (or more if it’s still stiff)

Preheat oven @ 425

1. Mix dry ingredients then fold in room temp shortening with hands.
2. Slowly add buttermilk. Until a sticky dough forms, just a touch dryer than biscuit dough, kneed lightly.
3. Place in floured cake tin with foil loosely over the top
4. Bake for 30 min, remove foil, finish for another 15.

BKBTY

Cake

Vegan Carrot Oat Cake 

1 Food Process
1 cup Oats
1 cup walnuts

2. In a mixing bowl
1 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp salt

3. Add food processed meal to above ingredients

4. In second bowl mix
2 cups shredded carrots
3/4 cup maple syrup
1 cup chopped apple
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

5. With a spatula, mix two bowls together and place in a  sprayed 9” square pan. Bake @ 325 for 1hr.

BKBTY

Braised Beans

Braised Romano Beans

Ingredients:

1/2 cup coconut oil

2 cups mirpoix

1 clove garlic, crushed

1pinch fennel seed

2 sprigs fresh rosemary

1/2 tsp red pepper purred with 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar

1 cup peeled, crushed ripe tomatoes, preferably roma tomatoes, with their juices

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 1/2 pounds flat green beans, ends trimmed.

Directions:

1. Heat oil in a deep skillet or a shallow three-quart saucepan. Add mirpoix and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until vegetables barely begin to brown, about 10 minutes. 

2. Add garlic and rosemary and cook until fragrant, a few minutes. Stir in tomato paste and tomatoes. Bring to a simmer. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer until mixture is well combined, about 5 minutes.

3. Add beans, setting them in pan all in one direction. Add 1/2 cup water. Bring to a simmer. Baste beans, season with salt, reduce heat to low. 

4 Cook gently, partly covered, turning beans in sauce from time to time, until beans are very tender, about 40 minutes. Adjust seasoning and serve hot or at room temperature.

BKBTY

Grape Leaves

Stuffed Grape Leaves

Ingredients:

1 jar grape leaves

1 cup brown rice, cooked about halfway

1/2 cup quinoa

1 small eggplant chopped finely (or your preferred seasonal vegetable)

1 serano chile minced

2 shallots chopped

tsp baharat

1/2 cup chevre cheese (I used one mixed with figs!)

1 bunch fresh chevril or flat leaf parsley, chopped

4 cups vegetable broth

S & P to taste

Preparation:
1. If using commercially prepared grape leaves, remove them from their jar and rinse them in cold water for about five minutes. They're pickled in a brine solution, so you'll want to separate them gently and let them soak for a while.
*home grown leaves can be used if they were procured in the spring.
2. Meanwhile, combine the rice, shallots, eggplant, squash, parsley, cheese and baharat, salt & pepper together in a bowl, mixing well.
3. Lay a few grape leaves out on a cutting board, shiny side down, and remove their stems. Place a small, compact scoop of the rice mixture in the middle of each leaf - about a tablespoon should do it, although you could use more if you have really big grape leaves. Fold the grape leaves over each other, like you're wrapping a burrito. wrap them as tightly as possible. Repeat until you've used up all your rice mixture, or run out of grape leaves.
4. Lay a few leaves flat to line your pot, then start to fill the pot with tightly packed rice filled leaves. Feel free to stack in layers using flat leaves to separate each layer. When you’ve packed all your grape leaves, pour the broth in on top, covering the rolled leaves just barely to the top.
5. Cover the pot and bring to a rolling boil, and then decrease heat and simmer for about 25 minutes.
When the rolled leaves are done simmering, the rice will be cooked all the way. Remove the leaves from the pot and serve hot!

BKBTY

Hello!!

Just to Catch Up

My biggest fan, Bud <3

Well lovelies, I've been out of town, out of the country, and into some extreme cooking! The birthday fairy visited me last week and to celebrate, I cooked an equinox feast. Replete with oat bannock and multiple fresh fruit pies! I have left my parents with way too many left overs (whoops! here's hoping it freezes?) It was a lot of fun, I also found a puff ball. A large edible wild mushroom that I used to see

(poke at) every fall as a little girl, but in more recent years they've been a rarity. It was great then to not only find one on our land, but be able to cook and eat it! I also found loads of sweet seedy wild grapes to munch on. The wild apples sadly were not quite ready yet. Still firmly clinging to their branches, I felt it better not to rush them, as presumably this fall I'll go apple picking at an orchard, which seriously is one of the most fun times you can have, ever.
So I ask you to think of this post as an explanation. The next few posts are all going to be recipes with photos, and they're the dishes I made and served last weekend, hope you all got to see the harvest moon Thurs, had a happy equal day and night on Sun, and tried balancing some eggs!

BKBTY

HAPPY ROSH HASHANAH!!!!

What A Great Month for Holidays!

Courtesy http://www.123rf.com 

I love it when September really gets under way and we start getting holidays and birthdays galore, it's as if the whole month is a celebration! That being said, Happy Rosh Hashanah to those observing, I hope you have a sweet new year! :) One of my favorite ways to respectfully honor someone else's culture or holiday, is to delve a little into the traditional foods that accompany them. Just like you used to in school, and people's parents would bring in food that their family eats on special days. I like that, I think it's a great way to acknowledge that something special is happening for a group of people, and that you respect that, even if it's a culture or belief system different from your own. I personally plan on enjoying my fresh farmer's market apple with a little raw honey today ;) It's also a great way to take a moment and celebrate the newly dawning apple season! My market had a good selection of 5 or 6 early fall varieties. Often more tart than their October counterparts but PERFECT for paring with something a little sweet, or baking into cakes and pies. My favorite pie of all times is peach apple, which can really only be made with fresh ingredients for a couple weeks a year, when peach season overlaps with early apple. It's sadly one of my few secret family recipes. Yup. I have some of those. Blood relations have access to their magic but no one else. They're often built upon other older family recipes, and I can't give mine without giving away something that belongs to my mom, grandmother, or aunt. But find a good peach pie recipe and substitute half of the peaches with apples. You won't be sorry. The only tip I'll pass along is that peaches cook faster than apples, so you must slice your apples about half the thickness of the peach slices so that they cook at the same rate. Happy apple eating, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

BKBTY

HAPPY LABOR DAY!!!

Happy Rainy Labor Day 

Image Courtesy Twentieth Century Fox.

Or maybe Rabor Day for short? I hope you're not working, or at least maybe only a little before your picnic in the rain ;) But don't loose heart, there are plenty of fun things to do with rain! Have a double feature potluck party! (Did someone say 9 to 5 back to back with Working Girl?????) Or maybe a last taste of summer indoor weenie roast replete with DCOM's and cartoons for our back to school crowd <3 Beat the heat with a rainy day slip and slide! (I DO NOT advise doing this if the rain becomes an electrical storm. Please don't get hit by lightening.) Have a wine tasting/cookie bake party and see what kind of interestingly shaped cookies end up happening. Or not happening. If the dough requires immediate consumption. Which happens. I've heard....Sometimes it even needs to be put on ice cream instead, so the house doesn't get too hot.

Whatever you do I hope it's fun and surrounded by those you love best, or if you can't be with them, I hope this nice day off affords you the opportunity to call/video call them. HAPPY LABOR DAY!!!

BKBTY