Perhaps on Valentine’s Day, you were checking this space for a long dissertation on love. In my mind, the giving of love, is not about this day. It is about every other day in a year. My only other thought, is that I have found joy and happiness in living my life as a love “distributor”. Love someone new on this day.
I have recently discovered the loveliness of black rice. Last evening, D and I headed out to an Ash Wednesday service and I wanted us to eat quite light. So this was perfect! Actually better than perfect. We were blown away by the flavours-like summertime in your mouth.
I do not believe in completely eliminating a food in one’s diet in order to achieve wellness. For example our family loves bacon and yet we know that it should be consumed in moderation. Because the aroma and taste of bacon is synonymous for us with cottage life, we generally only eat it for weekend brunches up at the beach house. But occasionally in the winter we have it as a “treat” and include it in our evening meal when higher calorie and fat portions are consumed already. Last night, I wanted a quick dinner before the start of the Jets Game and so I broiled chicken wings seasoned with “Bone Dust”, simmered some black rice and the hit of the dinner-an old school warm bacon spinach salad.
4 cups of loosely packed spinach leaves, prepared for safe consumption
2 large eggs, hard boiled and chopped
1 small red onion, sliced
⅓ c dried cranberries
8 strips of bacon, chopped
4 T bacon fat
4 T red wine vinegar
1 T maple syrup
1 T Dijon mustard
Instructions
Prepare and place spinach, eggs, onions and cranberries in salad bowl.
Cook bacon until crispy (fried or baked).
Retain 4 T of bacon drippings as your remove the bacon from the pan.
Blot with paper towel, after a quick spray at the sink with very hot water.
Place bacon in salad bowl.
Whisk together the dressing ingredients.
Adjust with pepper (salt is likely redundant)
Pour over top of salad just before serving.
If time has passed and the dressing starts to solidify, simply place in the mic for a minute.
The hot bacon fat with make the spinach wilt a wee bit-that is what you are going for.
2.2.6
Another trick to reduce fat from a dinner like ours on this evening, is to season the chicken drummettes under the skin and then completely remove the skin before eating. This way you enjoy all the flavour provided by the skin without consuming the extra fat in the skin.
And if you have not tasted the treat of black rice yet-you must. The taste is nutty and creamy at the same time and the health benefits will make it a new staple in our house. Black rice is a soluble fibre that is packed with anti-oxidants, making it a super food on par with blueberries!
Kath’s quote:“Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.”-Doug Larson
Every once in a while I get a real hankering for wild blueberries which I am happy to say can now be purchased at one of the grocery stores that I frequent. But even better, is the surprise of finding a container full of them in the bottom of your freezer. I can’t even say if I picked these myself last summer but no one else in my immediately family is a picker so it must have been me. Sometimes it is quite lovely to have a memory like a sieve…..
We were hosting our young families group on Friday night, so I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to whip up a berry crisp. The recipe that I found (modified and posted below) suggests that you make extra batches of topping to freeze and you can have another batch bubbling in the oven in a snap.
Tip: You can make extra batches of crisp topping and freeze it in individual freezer bags. So, at a moment's notice you can bake up a great dessert.
Ingredients
Crisp
1 c rolled oats
¾ c all purpose flour
½ c brown sugar, lightly packed
¾ t cinamon
½ c butter or margarine cut into pieces
⅓ c chopped pecans
Fruit Filling
¼ c sugar
1 T cornstarch (I had to use flour)
2 c blueberries (wild which were frozen) with juice
2 c mango pieces (I buy the frozen and always have it on hand)
Instructions
Crisp
Combine oats, sugar, cinamon and salt.
Add butter and rub it with your fingers into the dry ingredients.
Incorporate pecans with your hands.
Filling
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F..
In a large bowl, mix sugar and cornstarch.
Add fruit and mix well.
Pour into a shallow casserole dish.
Sprinkle evenly with crisp topping.
Bake until crisp is golden and fruit juices are bubbling, checking after 45 minutes.
Let stand at least 15 minutes before serving.
Can be served warm or at room temperature.
2.2.6
Kath’s quote: “I remember his burlesque pretense that morning of an inextinguishable grief when I wonder that I had never eaten blueberry cake before, and how he kept returning to the pathos of the fact that there should be a region of the earth where blueberry cake was unknown.”-William Dean Howells
I have a met a person, whom, as a result of reading my blog, but particularily entries about Isla Mujeres, has decided to spend a month long vacation there. I know why I love this little place, but will she? This has caused me to do some intense reflection. What is it about Isla Mujeres? Is it that I see beauty from a different perspective? I start this pictoral series with the basics: the buildings.
Kath’s quote: “Colour is like cooking. The cook puts in more or less salt, that’s the difference!”-Josef Albers
When our kids were little, we used to read them a story called “A Difficult Day” by Eugenie Fernandes about a little girl who endures a bad day at school, has a little temper tantrum and hides from her Mom. The Mom makes a batch of Melinda’s favourite cookies, finds her daughter and they eat them together under Melinda’s bed. Daughter #2 recently had a frustrating day at university and plunked herself in a wicker chair in the kitchen to tell me her woes. I happened to be making a batch of Peanut Butter Crunchies (that she had just mentioned missing the taste of). We both remembered the story book and she exclaimed how some things had never really changed. Except that I try very hard not to have sugary treats in the house like Peanut Butter Crunchies.
This is how I tried to adjust the recipe:
where it calls for peanut butter-I used a 100% natural crunchy variety where the ingredients are just peanuts and salt with no sugar or fat.
I cut back the brown sugar by 25% but there is both sugar and corn syrup.
I did not add any additional salt as the original recipes calls for.
I used bran flakes instead of corn flakes.
I used a brown rice variety of Kellogg’s rice crispies instead of the regular ones.
Daughter #2 declared that they tasted EXACTLY as she remembered them and they contributed to the turning around of her day. Are they healthy? Well, all I know is that I feel better about serving them to my little girl (even if she is almost 22 years old).
Kath’s quote: “I’ll love you forever. I’ll like for always. As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be”. –Robert Munsch
