Cooking up a Storm

While shopping at Whole Foods last Friday in search of ingredients for food gifts, I had dismissed the long lines and hoards of customers as part of the holiday season's hustle and bustle.

Later than night, when the first flakes of snow began to fall, which we soon learned would be a 26 hour snow fall-athon, I realized what I had witnessed earlier was snow panic.

Since my own snow panic never struck, when the storm did, we were left with dwindling remains from food purchases the week prior, frozen produce from summer, and staple dry goods.

So in between hunkering down and digging ourselves out, creative cooking also filled time in the days that followed.

Snow Shovel Breakfasts:
Oatmeal, stretched with couscous, combined with dried milk, (to spare our soy milk from taking a hit) dried fruits, nuts, and spices that were on hand. Day 2 breakfast was "eggy mash", a concoction I created for Umami mornings. This mixture of shredded egg, mayo, soy sauce, Sriracha, and sesame oil, is rich, creamy, salty, and protein packed.

Snow Shovel Snacks:
Pretzels w/homemade hummus. Dates and walnuts.

Snow Shovel Dinners:
Tortilla pizza topped with odds and ends. It's an amazing thing how, shmearing tomato paste on a tortilla, and topping it with with canned toms, various veggies, garlic and spices, parm, and Monterey Jack cheese, makes a great thin crust pizza. Our second dinner, multi grain waffles, tapped into quinoa, oat, and buckwheat flour reserves. Topped with agave syrup these were hearty and filling, and enough leftovers remained for 3 more breakfasts.

Tonight it will be wontons with fillings TBD, and a batch of creative granola bars, sans oats.

Tomorrow, off to the grocery I'll go.

May your staples always see you through the storm.

Be Well.

Raising the Bar

Yesterday it was time to make muffins. The snow outside was a calling to my oven to become steamy, and to emanate smells of warm cinnamon and banana.

My no-recipe muffin formula came together quickly- mashed bananas, oil, sugar, vanilla, milk, egg, and cinnamon, combined together with flours, oats, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Time to jazz up the bowl a bit.

Shelves were scoured and 2 of my finds were dried cranberries and a half bar of dark chocolate.

This particular bar, a hostess gift from way back in October, had oddly survived late night grazing over the past two months. Even intentional household chocolate purchases don't last this long, and therefore never become the baked good it was intended to be. This bar was a survivor.

Partly because, when nibbling through it over the past 2 months, I noticed that while the bar did offer deep dark flavors, an accompanying fatty smooth backdrop was missing, and no satisfaction ever came.

So choppity chopped it was and tossed together with dried cran. The cran-choc combo is kind of odd, kind of dynamic, and much more rich than either ingredient is on its own.

Time for the final mix and the oven was ready to radiate the smells of Cranana Chocolate Muffins.

As for the taste. . . well, when the warm melty dark chocolate met the muffin, let's just say, this time, I was satisfied.

May chocolate cravings be satisfied in many ways this winter season.

Be Well.