2 posts tagged “yogurt”
i have been messing with breakfast foods recently.
experiment 1 - some plain soy yogurt. add a little granola, walnuts, golden raisins, dried cranberries, ground flax seeds, and coconut powder.
result - delicious and quick!
experiment 2 - some ordinary pancake mix. toast and then chop almonds. add to mix along with coconut powder and a little vanilla extract. cook as usual.
result - nutty, vaguely sweet. subtle and very tasty.
experiment 3 - egyptian breakfast. go to whole foods/wild oats/fresh market/other good grocery and purchase hard whole wheat berries from the bulk section. soak overnight. the next day, cook in water until they are soft. strain. return wheats to the pot, add milk/soy milk to cover the wheats generously and cook a little more (mostly to heat the milk). you will have wheat in kind of a milk soup. then add coconut, golden raisins, walnuts, and ground flax seeds.
result - chewy wheats in an interesting breakfast soup. lots of good fiber.
experiment 4 - crazy pancakes. take ordinary pancake mix, one diced banana, chopped raisins, toasted and chopped almonds and walnuts, coconut powder, ground cinnamon, a little vanilla extract. cook as usual.
result - this batter was FULL of stuff, and made thick pancakes. it was hard to tell when they were done because of the banana pieces that got smooshy. resulting pancakes were very flavorful.
also, i have been eating a lot of mashed potatoes with kale. i make the mashed potatoes like normal. wash the kale and take off the tough stems, chop it up and saute it with a little oil and lots of garlic. i taste a piece periodically to see when it stops being bitter and starts tasting sweet. don't want to cook it past that point.
i got the idea to try eating kale (though my childhood memories of it were that it tasted like bitter grass clippings) after i found The World's Healthiest Foods site. lots of information there.
the last thing i tried to make was gajar korma from my usual source for delicious recipes. i like carrots and i like korma, so i thought i would test it out. looking at the recipe, i noticed that there really was no liquid involved. none. this looked like it may cause problems.
my korma turned out very very dry (even though i decided to modify the instructions by splashing water into the pan fairly frequently) and by the time it was done cooking the carrots had taken on a really dark color and a consistency that reminded me of cooked hamburger.
not pretty.
i was really sad about the whole thing until i took a bite and realized that even though it was totally screwed up, it still tasted fantastic! i cooked some rice and piled the korma on top and added a big scoop of plain yogurt. DELICIOUS!!
i am definitely going to try it again, but with some changes to my method. i think that the pan i used was toooooo big. this would let the carrot shreds spread out and probably dry faster. also, there is nothing really in the recipe that specifies how to regulate the heat. i think that during the long cook at the end, the heat should be medium-low. and finally, the recipe doesn't tell you to put a lid on the pan while doing the long cook at the end, but i think this might help with the dryness factor.
i liked my messed up version and the plain yogurt so much that i started wondering how hard it would be to make my own yogurt. my friend who is in africa apparently makes her own all the time! this article here makes it sound pretty easy and also like it may be the best thing ever. (or at least better than store-bought yogurt)
yogurt is supposed to be incredibly good for you, giving you lots of good bacteria to increase the competition for resources on your insides, thereby making it harder for the bad bacteria to get out of control.
