Ancient Grains: Cooking with Kamut

“…it seemed a part of her life, to step from the ancient to the modern, back and forth. She felt rather sorry for those who knew only one and not the other. It was better, she thought, to be able to select from the whole menu of human achievements than to be bound within one narrow range.”

― Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind

Have you ever heard of kamut?  Maybe, maybe not.  It has an interesting history, and has been recently made popular along with other ancient grains, in the world of trendy food.

I’m always up for something new, and a friend at The Farm School tried growing some grains as an independent project last summer – kamut included.  He was so great about explaining them, and I remembered kamut as the one that stood out the most to me.  I had never heard of it, and here a friend was growing it – a grain storied to have been found in the tombs of Egyptian Pharoahs (spoiler alert: that might not be 100% accurate).

So, lucky me, one day months later I stumbled upon a vast selection of Bob’s Red Mill grains and flours, and discovered that they carry kamut!  What a find!

The Hunt for Good Luck: Black Eyed Peas for New Years

This year, I learned that not everybody eats black eyed peas for good luck on New Year’s.  Wandering the aisles of Target, Eric and I came up with zilch on our mission for black eyed peas.   We bothered two poor guys stocking shelves, who were so perplexed as to what a black eyed pea even was that it was clear they hadn’t put them on any shelves anywhere – not in their pantry at home, much less on the shelves at Target.

I was dumbfounded!  It was New Year’s Eve!  We hypothesized that maybe the shelves had been cleared out since it’s a food so heavily associated with that holiday, but we found no labels on the shelves to prove us wrong.  We wandered over to another grocery store and found a small selection of black eyed peas – clearly in no amount intended to provide for the masses this New Year’s.  But, we made our purchase and moved on.

So, I looked into it.  I guess part of me knew it was a Southern tradition, but part of me just thought it was plain old tradition.  According to a bit of history from Peas for Prosperity, it seems it’s a very, very Southern tradition indeed.  So – even if folks up here in the Northeast don’t deign to eat black eyed peas for their good luck, I do, so here’s a recipe for your New Year’s parties going forward (in the event that you invite a Southern gal).

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Zannie’s Black Eyed Pea Dip, from The Pioneer Woman

Ingredients:

• 1 14 oz. can black eyed peas
• 1/4 onion, chopped
• 1/4 c sour cream
• 2-3 oz. diced chiles or jalapeños
• 1 c grated cheddar
• 3 tbs. salsa
• Chipotle Tabasco, salt & pepper to taste

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350°.  Drain and mash black eyed peas.  Add all other ingredients and stir.   Spread into a 1 1/2 quart baking dish, top with extra cheese and tabasco.  Bake for 20-30 minutes.

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So, obviously, this recipe is courtesy of everyone’s favorite pioneer woman (second only to Laura Ingalls Wilder), Ree Drummond.  I have only slightly edited it, making a slightly spicier dip.  Also, I absolutely always double the recipe.  It’s SO good – you’re going to wish you doubled it if you don’t.

But, let me quickly air a grievance.  Maybe I’m wrong, but when I find recipes on a blog, and I have to scroll for ages, looking at a photograph of each and every step of the cooking process (chop the onions, pour the peas into the bowl, put the cheese in the bowl, etc.)  I get annoyed.  Yes, the photos are lovely.  However, I know what putting cheese in a bowl looks like, and you’ve now made me scroll for ages to get to the summed up version of this recipe.  Again, maybe this is pure joy for other folks finding recipes on blogs – let me know if that’s the case, and I’ll try to up my step-by-step photography game – but there’s a part of me that’s re-blogging this recipe simply so that it’s concise.  Grievance aired.

I hope that you all try this dip out, lack of photography aside, and maybe even adopt a new tradition if you don’t already eat black eyed peas for good luck in the new year!

Enjoy,

Alex

The Day We Ran Out of Butter

There’s a certain reverence for real butter among those who love cooking.  It’s a valuable ingredient in many things, and it’s a fat – a word that our diet-ridden mentality makes us shy away from, but one that is necessary for our recommended diet, nutrition, body function, and of course good cooking.  Fat. Fat fat fat fat fat.  You gotta have it, so call it like it is.  Butter is fat.  Oil is fat.  Lots of things are fat – avocados and almonds are super fatty! – and you need them.  And if you’re going to cook with real ingredients, you’re going to cook with butter.

That being said, we ran out of butter the other day.  Alas.

We’re trying to save money around here, and making fewer trips to the grocery store, in an effort to force us to cook with what we already have, is one strategy.  So, running out to spend $4 on butter just to make one recipe seemed like a temptation not worth risking.

As much as I love butter, I also love substituting for ingredients in recipes in an effort to be frugal.  Do you want to know a lovely substitute for butter in baking recipes?  Applesauce.

Something to Crow About: Three Irresistible Chicken Recipes

Three cheers – and recipes – for the humble chicken!

The type of cooking that I truly love, which I think everybody can benefit from, is the kind of cooking where one dish leads to another, and another, and another, until there aren’t leftovers. Or – even better – until what’s left is exactly what you need to start a new series of dishes.

That’s exactly what I was able to do with a little help from a chicken, The River Cottage Meat Book, and the one-and-only Martha Stewart.

I discovered this book at The Farm School (home to many, many wonderful cookbooks) and spent the better part of my time there eyeing it at a safe distance.  This is probably due to my tenuous relationship with meat – for the better part of five years, from 2007 – 2012, I was vegetarian.  I always explained that it was fundamentally a dietary choice (in that Americans consume more meat on a regular basis than most other peoples of the world), and that though I disagree with the inhumane treatment of and poor living conditions for animals, I do acknowledge that there are good people out there, raising animals well, with the intention of eating them. 

Christmas Cookies and Happy Hearts

“Christmas cookies and happy hearts, this is how the holiday starts.”

I love baking Christmas cookies.  Even on the worst days, on what may seem like it could be the worst Christmas ever, cold and grumpy and tired, I’ve found myself making Christmas cookies and loving it.

They’re simple, and the recipe I found for these cut-out cookies makes a great dough that’s still sweet and chewy after baking – not hard as a rock, or brittle.  I will admit, icing them may be slightly tedious once you’ve reached the wee hours of the night, but it’s probably the most fun, second only maybe to cutting out your very own whimsical shapes.

I found this recipe a few years ago, and I’m willing to swear by it.  Especially if you’re baking with the help of kids (or kitchen-fearing significant others) – it’s really approachable.

We are indeed a nation of shopkeepers.

Today is a very big day!  I am so pleased to announce that this very morning, after putting in a lot of love and hard work, I joined the ranks of the shopkeepers on Etsy!  If you’re curious, take a peek at my shop: etsy.com/shop/BraveGirlAdventures

Right now, it’s home to listings of some really fantastic handmade stationary that I put together with lots of help from my dear Eric.  They feature leaves collected in Sudbury, MA that I pressed in an effort to keep the fall around a bit longer.

A set of five handmade cards with envelopes

Cook to Eat, Eat to Live

Oh man, cooking.

Let me tell you, I appreciate anybody who truly appreciates good food.  That doesn’t mean that I’m cooking five course, gourmet meals all day every day, but it does mean that I’m not afraid to figure out how to make good ingredients into something spectacular.

Working on a farm has been an absolutely incredible opportunity in the realm of cooking, for a lot of reasons.  Obviously, having lots of food handy is a big help (duh).  But, maybe not so obviously, I get to learn from 15+ other folks about how they approach cooking, what flavors work well together, what you can do with some of those ingredients I’ve never really figured out, and how some things that take a lot of time are well worth it.