Breakfasts

This is what I've been eating for breakfasts lately:  some grains, maybe some beans, and fruit or veggies.    For example,

Here was a "mango salad":   oat groats, beans, mango, lime juice and cilantro.  I had this for 3-4 days:

Here was a "savory" breakfast.  I cooked up a batch of rice of different kinds (brown, wild, forbidden).   I store that in the fridge and have a serving each morning so can make a quick meal out of it.  Here I cooked up some onion and spinach and garlic, and some spice (don't remember, but some good ones are tandoori seasoning, singapore seasoning, cumin, curry, or nothing at all--it's quite good all by itself).   At left is some teeccino (chicory barley drink), top are a few frozen blueberries, top right, a few gulps leftover after making housemate's smoothie (usually just a few Tbs are left):

Next day it's the same rice mixture, cooked up with spinach and onion (probably some garlic too) and red bell pepper.   I also accidentally got to enjoy part of a potato.  When you bake a potato, if you forget to punch holes in it with a fork first, then it's best not to handle it just after it's done cooking; if you grab it a little too forcefully, it can explode like this one did.  so I enjoyed what was left after it exploded in the oven.  Along with that is a bit of frozen mango and the leftover gulp from housemate's smoothie.

Here's more of the same.  You start to see the picture.  This day I was in a hurry.  I just added frozen peas to my grains (heated up), and cooked up some spinach in the orange bowl (I love cooked spinach just plain).  There's a few frozen mangos and blueberries, a few gulps from the smoothie, and some teeccino.

This day I cooked up some oatmeal, cooked up and onion, red bell pepper, and spinach, combined them with some curry and nutritional yeast---it was very good.  with the usual suspects on the side:

For the last few days, my grains were kamut, barley and rye.  I had them with a banana for a couple of days (and cinnamon), with the usual suspects on the side (cooked spinach, blueberries, etc).  Oh, and I like to read a blessing from this book before I eat:

Today I was in the mood for beans with my grains, so I had beans, grains, strawberry and banana, and the usual suspects on the side.

This is a filling and satisfying breakfast.  I love it!

cooked multi-grain

I don't know what else to call this.  It is a bunch of grains cooked together.  I couldn't pick one so I cooked them all.

Ingredients:

1. 1/4 cup purple barley
2. 1/4 cup forbidden rice
3. 1/4 cup oat groats
4. 1/4 cup buckwheat 
5. 1/4 cup red quinoa

I have them ordered in their cooking time (longest first).  Total cooking time was 1 hr, 15 minutes or so, plus another hour to cool.  This is one of those things you do when you are at home doing other things. I was reading a book and the breaks were okay because it was one of those books that makes you think.

• Add the barley to 3 cups water, bring to boil, turn down to simmer, cook for 25 minutes.
• Add the forbidden rice, bring to boil, turn down to simmer, cook for 10 minutes.
• Add the oat groats; cook for 10 minutes.  While that is cooking, prep the buckwheat and quinoa.  I put each in a bowl with some water and microwaved for 30-60 seconds to get hot.  let sit for 10 minutes, then rinse.  why?  well, the buckwheat has this layer that turns gooey in water so I like to rinse that off.  and I'm told the quinoa has a bitter outer coating.  Rinse both. 
• add the buckwheat, return to simmer/boil;  see if you need to add more water
• add the quinoa, return to simmer/boil,  cook for 15 minutes.  check.  cook longer if needed
• when it's done, if there is too much water, take the lid off and stir and let some evaporate.  you can pour it off too.  then call it "sticky grains" and pretend you intended it this way.

It sounds complicated but the times aren't set in stone.   Grains are pretty forgiving.  It's not like baking.

This makes 4 cups:

oatmeal #3

I was low on food, and this is what I came up with.  I would have had a salad but didn't have enough fixings.  

Ingredients:  

1/4 cup steel-cut oats or 1/2 cup rolled oats

2 prunes, chopped

1 Tbsp goji berries

a few cups chopped spinach or arugula

part of a leek or onion

Start cooking the oats in 1 cup water.  I like to cook it for about an hour if I'm using steel cut oats.  Or bring them to a boil and then turn off the stove for an hour and then come back and cook for 20 minutes.   Add the onion early on, then the prunes and goji berries, then the spinach.   This was interesting, not bad, different from what I'm used to.  I think I'd have to try it again.  I used arugula since I didn't have spinach.  I think I'd prefer spinach.  

easy beans & rice

Ingredients:

2 cups dried beans or 2 cans. small beans don't require soaking (adzuki, lentils, split peas). Larger beans (black, black-eyed, kidney, pinto)--soak overnight

0.5-1 cup rice or other grain (e.g., barley, kamut, quinoa)

2 cups carrot juice

2 cups celery juice

2 cups water

1 onion

a bunch of greens (optional)

Throw it all in a pot and cook for about 2 hours. When I steam veggies, I've been freezing the water used for boiling since it might capture some of the vitamins from the veggies. So I used that for my water. Today I realized I didn't have any rice so I used 1/4 cup barley, 1/4 cup kamut, and 1/4 cup quinoa. It was good! The kamut is chewy. I like it. The veggie juice adds a nice sweet flavor so makes up for the lack of oil and salt and spices. Oh, and I used adzuki beans today. I'm into small beans right now. And I used 3 small bunches of baby bok choy as my greens--these were really good.

Divided into 6 (large) servings, total calories per are 350, protein 36 g (18%), carbs 140 g (79%), fat 2 g (4%)

oatmeal #2

This tasted perfect to me.   I don't think I want to change it for a while.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup steel cut oats

0.5 oz raw walnuts, chopped

1.5 oz spinach, chopped

1 Tbsp goji berries

1 dried fig, chopped

1 small apple with skin, chopped

I added about 3/4 cup water, and the berries and chopped fig to the oats, heated it up to boiling and then let it sit for a while.  Then I came back and added the other stuff, heated it up to boiling and let it sit for a while (so I didn't have to watch it).  I think I ended up adding another 1/4 cup water.   It ended up sitting for more than an hour.  Of course, you can just cook it all at once.  It probably takes 20-30 minutes.  Add the spinach  in the last few minutes.  I also had some fresh local sorrel which I chopped and added.  That is really good stuff--very lemony.

hmm, I should try frozen blueberries too...

Total calories 395, protein 10 g (10%), carbs 62 g (61%), fat 12 g (29%).

oatmeal #1

1/4 cup steel cut oats

1/4 cup quinoa

1 prune chopped

1 Tbsp goji berries

1/2 oz chopped raw walnuts

Rinse the quinoa, soak everything in 1 cup water, or start cooking.  Mine needed 30 minutes cooking even after soaking for an hour or so.    it was yummy

total calories:  465.  protein 14 g (12%), carbs 67 g (59%), fat 15 g (29%).  

This is pretty high-calorie and filling so if you want less, you can oats or quinoa instead of oats and quinoa.  I'll try that next time.

cherry essene

I pretty much followed strix's instructions but I'm putting them here for easy reference.  well, I changed it a bit.

Ingredients:

1 cup kamut.  soak overnight, then sprout (seems to only take a day + a few hours) (after soaking and sprouting, it was closer to two cups).

1/4 cup dried cherries

1/4 cup raisins  (strix used 1/2 cup cherries but mine aren't that sweet so I split it with raisins)

1/4 cup walnuts

2 tsp vanilla

some freshly grated nutmeg

Soak the cherries and raisins in 1/3 cup water.   Then blend everything in the blender.  I added the soaking water too which helped it blend.  It takes a while to get the blender to start mixing it all--lots of smashing with the plunger.  But then you get a nice smooth batter.  Spread it on parchment paper on a big pan.  I baked it at 250 F for about 45 minutes then let it sit in the oven for another 30 minutes while I ran to the hardware store (I love the hardware store--those guys are so helpful!).  So alternatively I might have cooked it for 60 minutes if I were at home to watch it.  But this worked fine.  Oh, if you have a dehydrator, that's probably better and then you can keep this "raw", but I don't have requirements for raw (feel free to convince me otherwise).

Here's the batter spread out:

After it baked and cooled, I cut it into 11 pieces (servings).  

It wasn't super-sweet but I think it was just right, a nice flavor.  

Nutritional info per serving:  Calories 105, protein 3g (10%), carbs 19g (71%), fat 2g (19%)  

essene bread

This is experiment #2 with essene bread.  

Ingredients:

1/2 cup kamut berries

1/3 cup raisins

I soaked the berries overnight, then put them in a bell jar.  I stopped at an expensive kitchen store (conveniently located or I wouldn't have bothered), and asked if they had sprouting jars.  I'm not sure they knew what they were, and they didn't have them.  I also had to make a stop at the hardware store next door for something else and on a whim I said, hey do you have sprouting jars?  The woman said, no, but we have some nylon mesh you can try.  After spending 79 cents on a big piece of nylon, I cut out a circular piece and put it in my bell jar lid--worked like a charm.  

Then screwed on the lid.  This does make for easier rinsing.  So I rinsed them and put the can on it's side with a towel over them (darkness), and let them sprout, rinsing every 8 hours or so (5-12 depending on when I was home).  

It only took about a day to get the spouts about half the size of the berry.  Then I combined the berries and raisins in the blender.  This wasn't quite enough to blend easily so I had to do a lot of smashing with the plunger and reblending.    Then I put it in the oven for over an hour at 250 degrees.  It sticks to the pan.  I forgot to use parchment paper like strix suggests.  I used corn meal but you'd need a lot for that to work and I didn't use much.  It still turned out good.  more on that in my next post.

essene cookie

This was my first experiment making essene bread--which is made from sprouted grains.  I used 30 g of wheatberries.   That was about 1/8 cup or so.  I decided to go very small for my first experiment.  I followed strix's advice from her blog.  I didn't have any "equipment" so I used a colander like strix suggested.  Well, first I soaked the wheatberries overnight in a bowl of water, then rinsed them, then soaked some more, then  put them in the colander overnight in a pan with a towel over it.  

I rinsed them again, and then put them back under the towel a few times.  By tonight the sprouts were about half the size of the grain so I decided to make them up.  I ground them in my coffee grinder--didn't work so great because they were soggy.  I added 20 g of raisins (~ 1/8 cup) and ground them up too.  I forgot to add vanilla.  I put it on a pizza pan and shaped it like a cookie and baked at 200 F for 30 minutes, turned it over and let sit in the warm oven for another 10 minutes.  It was pretty good.   I think it needed more grinding though.  But that small quantity wouldn't grind in the blender or food processor---I suppose I could have used the juicer.

oatmeal

Ingredients for 1 serving (increase as needed for more):

1/2 cup oats

water (usually about twice as much as the oats).

chopped walnuts  (say, 1-2 Tbsp per serving)

chopped apple or pear if you have one (optional)

raisins or chopped figs for sweetening

soy milk or other non-dairy milk (optional)

berries (optional)

chopped spinach (optional--yes, it is good!)

Cook the oatmeal until it tastes how you like it.  I like it well-cooked so I often go 30 minutes for the steel cut oats.  Or better than that, if you have time, let it get hot or boil, then soak for 20-whatever minutes, and then it will cook quicker and taste better.   Add more water or soy milk as it gets too thick.  Stir a lot at the beginning to prevent clumping.   About half-way through you can add the fruit and nuts and raisins and soy milk and spinach.  When the oatmeal is done, add the berries---if frozen, add them earlier.