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I saw that Kitchen Aid is now making ranges in "misty blue."
I'm not interested, as I've settled on a Thermador (please, please let the contractor be ready to start soon), but I wonder if "misty blue," will end up going the way of avocado and almond appliances.
I'd actually prefer a white stove. Sigh.
I have a lot of oat bran, as I got a little enthusiastic last year when ordering from Bob's Red Mill. It's the one ingredient into which I've not made much of an inroad. On Tuesday morning, after looking for recipes yesterday afternoon, I baked “Apple-Oat Bran Muffins,” a recipe by Linda Greider, published by The Washington Post (Oct. 12, 1988), back when oat bran was supposed to be the miracle additive.
As Ms. Greider points out in her accompanying article, a high proportion of oat bran usually resulted in dry baked goods, once they cooled. That’s why I’ve not baked, for a long time, an apple-date oat bran recipe that I have. She says in her article that oat bran is coarse, so it should be ground in the food processor before using. (I've seen other articles that recommend soaking it in some of the liquid for about 10 minutes before proceeding.) She also uses either chopped apple or a mashed banana to retain moisture. With one cup of oat bran and 1/4 cup whole wheat as the flours, that fruit is necessary, although she says an extra quarter cup of buttermilk can replace it.
I thought it would be nice to have a small muffin with my oatmeal, so I baked the recipe this morning, using an overripe banana. My only change was to use a whole egg, rather than an egg white plus a tablespoon of oil. (As I said, it’s a recipe from the 1980s when the prevailing dietary view was that eggs are bad for you.) It only uses 2 Tbs. brown sugar, but it also uses 2 Tbs. jam, and I used my homemade strawberry, lower sugar jam. I added 1/3 cup chopped walnuts. I ended up with 9 rather than 8 muffins, and I actually got more rise than the recipe indicated I would. My husband and I both had one after our oatmeal this morning, and they are good without butter. Now we need to see if they are still good at room temperature.
Note: They are good at room temperature. As a bonus, they have 44 mg calcium per muffin.
Thank you for bringing up these recipes, S. Wirth. There is also an oil crust in the KAF 200th Anniversary Baking Book. I'll have to decide which crust to try. It looks like I may get some apples after all! There is a U-Pick orchard about a 45 minute drive from here, and we plan to go next week. They have a variety of apples, among them Jonathans and Winesaps!
On Saturday afternoon, I baked Black Forest Brownies from Jenny Jones’ blog, as I fortuitously had a can of dark cherries in juice in the pantry. I made some slight changes: added 1 Tbs. flax meal, deleted the tablespoon of sugar, and used non-fat Chobani Greek yogurt, which is what I have in the house. (I’m hoping the flax meal will help, since the recipe says 2% Greek yogurt.) I baked in a parchment-lined pan. I used 30 grams of semi-sweet chocolate chips, which is less than the ¼ cup in the recipe. I calculated the saturated fat in my version at 19g per 9x9-inch pan. I cut the brownies into twelve servings, which means each has 1.58 g. saturated-fat and served them with a bit of frozen low-fat yogurt. These are pretty good. If I make them again, I would add ½ tsp. of espresso powder.
I made Clam Chowder for lunch on Wednesday, using olive oil to sauté the onion. (I threw out the bacon grease when I went on the low-saturated fat diet). It was my usual recipe from an old Betty Crocker cookbook. I used two cups, unpeeled Kennebec potatoes from the farmers’ market. I used canned, chopped clams, but I prefer minced. The “secret” ingredient is celery seed, first added by my college roommate, who taught me to appreciate celery seed.
For Wednesday dinner, I soaked, then cooked a package of black-eyed peas—one of the few legumes that my husband enjoys. I also made a sauce for spinach noodles and broccoli using some defatted chicken-sweet potato drippings from the freezer, some onion, ½ tsp. dried sage, a couple Tbs. of my homemade pumpkin butter, Parmesan cheese, pepper, and a bit of the pasta water. Some rotisserie chicken completed the meal.
OK--it's time to get some baking going this week, especially here with highs in the 40s. (Update: it actually got into the lower 50s.)
On Tuesday morning, I baked a healthier version of my Harvest Pumpkin Cake. It comes from a recipe in King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion (p. 194), but the texture is definitely that of a cake not a bar cookie, so I changed the name. It is a favorite of my younger stepson who often requested it for his birthday. I wanted to see if I could make some healthy tweaks to it, so I substituted ½ cup barley flour for that much AP flour, reduced the sugar to ¾ cup from 1 cup and the salt from 1 tsp. to ¾ tsp. I have always added ¼ cup powdered milk. I added 2 Tbs. chia seed and 1 Tbs. flax meal this time. I always use my own pumpkin puree. I will forgo the lovely low-fat cream cheese (Neufchatel) frosting—which includes 3 Tbs. of butter—and serve pieces with pumpkin butter dollops on top.
I'll add a note this evening about how we like this version.
Note: The changes shifted the cake closer to a bar cookie, although it is still a cake. We liked the flavor, and we both enjoyed spreading a layer of pumpkin butter over the top. (Saturated fat content is 1.125 grams for 1/8 of the 9x9-inch cake.)For Sunday dinner, I roasted chicken thighs on a rack (and removed skin before eating). I made ratatouille for the last time this season, using our tomatoes, and two somewhat pitiful small bell peppers from our garden, along with yellow summer squash from the grocery, and two small eggplants, onion, and garlic from the farmers’ market. We had it over a mixture of brown and other rice.
