Whole Grain Rice Salad

I missed last year's cherry season.  I don't know how it happened, but it came and went before I even realized it had happened.  This year I overcompensated with a mixed flat of sweet and sour cherries.  What I did with them is another post for another day, but I set aside a few to make the Whole Grain Rice Salad from Super Natural Every Day.

I had to make a few adjustments based on what I had on hand.  There was no baby spinach, but there was... either Swiss chard or beet greens, I can't even be sure.  Pecans had to take the place of walnuts, which I didn't have.  I opted for feta over goat cheese, and for the all-important grain base, I chose wild rice.  The salad was fine, but honestly, not exciting to me.  I can't exactly place why.  I'm sure, though, that it wasn't the dressing.  I had some of the leftover dressing on a green salad, and it made that green salad worth eating.  I'm not typically a fan, but the cherry dressing was such a unique flavor, it seemed to make it worthwhile.

So the bottom line here is that I can't judge too harshly having made so many substitutions, but it's unlikely that I'll try this salad again.  The dressing, however, is one I'll come back to.

Cornmeal Pancakes with Warm Cherry Sauce

The featured cookbook right now is Ancient Grains for Modern Meals, which I bought a few months ago.  I haven't made too much from this book, but I flagged a few to try over the next few weeks while it's being featured.

Today I decided on the Cornmeal Pancakes with Warm Cherry Sauce.  Why?  I wanted breakfast, and I had a bag of cherries in the fridge that were hanging on by a thread and I didn't want them to go to waste.  Plus I love things with cornmeal.  I had a great cornbread french toast once at the place we sometimes go to brunch on the weekends - I'll have to remember to recreate that sometime.  So I decided to make the cornmeal pancakes.

They really came out great.  I enjoyed them as well as the warm cherry sauce.  I halved each cherry to remove the pit (with all my kitchen gadgets, I surprisingly do not own a cherry pitter) and cooked them with honey, orange zest, and cloves to make a delicious sauce, thickened with a bit of cornstarch.  I multiplied the recipe by 1.5 because I had 3 cups of cherries instead of 2 to use.  I have about 2 cups left that we'll have to find another use for (cherry yogurt maybe?) but I'm not too worried about that.

I didn't have any buttermilk, so I used yogurt thinned out a bit in its place.  I think it worked out just fine - I didn't notice any significant difference, but I would also like to try it as written.  I would also love to try the cornmeal pancakes with blueberries.  In fact, I could see making a similar kind of sauce with blueberries... maybe with some cinnamon instead of cloves and lemon instead of orange zest... yum!

Cherry Vanilla Smoothie

Today's breakfast was the Cherry Vanilla Smoothie from So Easy.  It tasted pretty good, but as-is, I feel like it's more of a dessert.  It tasted like cherry vanilla ice cream to me.

I'd make a ton of adjustments to the recipe.  First, it was too sweet, so I'd cut down on the honey.  Maybe take it out entirely if still using the vanilla yogurt.  Second, I think it's really strange that the vanilla is so prevalent here, but was completely lacking in the oatmeal - I think it could use a bit less vanilla here, maybe even none with vanilla yogurt.  Ken suggested just a drop of honey and plain yogurt, and he usually likes things sweeter than I do.  Finally, I think the serving size is too large.  Maybe you need a piece of almond butter toast or something to go with it, but I'd cut down the serving size.  For comparison, the serving size is equal to the mid-size cup at Jamba Juice - 2.5 cups or 20 ounces.  Way too much!

Walnut-Dried Cherry Bars

I can't believe I haven't posted about the Walnut-Dried Cherry Bars in Ellie Kreiger's book So Easy.  I make these all the time.  It's painful for me when I take the last one out of the freezer.  They are perfect for before or after a workout, or for breakfast, or for an afternoon snack when you are craving something sweet and baked.

I have been meaning to mess around with these.  I want to try reversing the flavors - instead of dried cherries with apricot preserves, I want to try dried apricots with cherry preserves.  But I like it too much to mess with it like that.  If there are none left in the freezer, I can't bring myself to do it.

Today I finally tried something at least a little different.  I did not feel like removing everything in the refrigerator to get to my whole wheat flour, which is also almost gone, so I reached for something else instead.  Near the front of the shelf was the multigrain flour mix I made from Kim Boyce's book Good to the Grain.  I have been substituting this in many places in an attempt to make things more interesting.  It worked out great in the oatmeal sandwich bread, and it lightened that up a bit, so I thought it would be good here.  Lucky for me, it was great.  I always have to eat one of these, because I make them when I am already craving them, so I got to try it with the multigrain flour and it came out really well.  It was lighter than the whole wheat but didn't stand out too much in taste.

If you like to take snacks with you to work, school, etc. this is a perfect recipe for transportation.  I wrap mine in wax paper, then store them in ziplock bags in the freezer.  I grab one before I leave the house and when I reach for it 2 hours later it's completely defrosted.

As I mentioned above, I'd like to try reversing the flavor combination, but I would also like to try some completely different flavors as well.  Any suggestions?