Rye Soda Bread with Dill Butter

This is a fantastic pair of recipes from Super Natural Every Day.  I've been meaning to make the Rye Soda Bread - it's one of the ones I had my eye on early on when I got the book.  The Dill Butter was never on my short list.  But when we got two bunches of dill from the CSA, I figured, why not both?  I used up some of the chives from my little container garden as well.

I don't know what I was thinking not wanting to make the Dill Butter to go with the bread.  It's ridiculously good!  I'm not one to butter my bread, which is why I wasn't interested in it at first - but it's really worth it.  I have been snacking on it for the past few days, and I even ate it for breakfast yesterday (and probably will tomorrow).  Despite the somewhat assertive flavors it actually makes a very nice breakfast.  (In Heidi's book it's in the Lunch section, but I like to warm it up and we don't have a toaster oven at work, so breakfast it is!)  Farmer cheese is added to the butter, almost as much as there is butter, so it's not entirely butter that I'm eating for breakfast!

I'm officially out of rye flour, though, so now it's time to try a variation with some other types of flour.  I'm trying to use up as much of my flour as possible, but it's rough with all this produce coming at me left and right!

Which reminds me... I'll try to get my CSA post up tomorrow!

Heidi's Multigrain Pancakes

It's been a while since we've really cooked.  I find it easier to feel motivated in the beginning of the day, so I went with breakfast.  Heidi's Multigrain Pancakes from Super Natural Every Day - served with fresh local strawberries, sliced.  The leftover whole wheat, oat, and rye buttermilk batter made us a few Monday morning waffles.

Zucchini Bread

It is obvious by now that I am trying to cook my way through Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain.  There are some things in there that don't appeal to me all that much right now, but since I haven't set a time limit on working my way through the book, I'm sure I'll eventually try them.  Every recipe I've made has been delicious (even the aesthetic failures).

I've got zucchini in my fridge.  It's not that I don't like zucchini... but it's not my favorite, and it never has been.  When we get zucchini in our CSA, I usually just leave it all with my mom - she and my sister love it.  But somehow it's snuck into my home via my Nonna and her garden.  She asked me if I wanted zucchini, and I, unable to refuse fresh local produce of any kind, said sure, I can take one, I'll make zucchini bread.  She came back with this beastly monster - over a pound, maybe a pound and a half - so I made two batches of zucchini bread, and still haven't finished that one zucchini.

The zucchini bread from Good to the Grain is not your average zucchini bread.  It uses mint and basil, infused into butter, and rye flour instead of your typical wheat.  Most of my test subjects loved it - my mom and sister complained about the rye and said they wanted "normal" zucchini bread.  (Make it yourself!)  That did get me thinking, though, about possible variations - more about that later.

I truly love this bread.  I think it's amazing.  I wouldn't think of using rye flour in zucchini bread - but that's why I bought this book.  I'm almost hesitant to even change the recipe - the whole book, organized by flour, already provides the best matches of flours to other ingredients.  My first batch of this bread was a little minty - I measured more loosely in my second batch and it was just right.  The headnotes suggest having a slice with a cup of mint tea, which sounds absolutely perfect to me.  It's great to just have it around for a snack.  I expect a loaf (or half a loaf) might freeze nicely as well, if tightly wrapped.

There is so much I want to do with this recipe.  Leave it the same, but add walnuts.  Sub some white whole wheat in for part or all of the all purpose flour (being cautious about the assertive taste wheat flour can bring to a recipe).  An all whole wheat version.  Bits of different flour.  Multigrain flour mix instead of rye.  The same basic structure, but with banana and walnuts instead of zucchini and herbs.  There are so many possibilities...

Banana Cereal Muffins

This morning I made the Banana Cereal Muffins from Good to the Grain, my new favorite book. Written by Kim Boyce, a pastry chef turned stay at home mom, these recipes are designed for optimal performance rather than nutrition - something that always bothers me until I get to the delicious finished product. I plan to try the recipes as-is first, then begin to tinker a little to cut down on some of the all-purpose flour she uses. I'm not a pastry chef, so a flatter muffin top won't really bother me.

Some of the ingredients this recipe calls for: cracked multigrain hot cereal, whole-grain rye flour, bananas, molasses. Yum. The multigrain cereal, which I really bought with this recipe in mind, is actually delicious as a cereal if you like cream of wheat, oatmeal, etc. (which I do). I made it for breakfast (plain, with water only) and reserved the 1/2 cup needed for the muffins for when I had more time to make them. I made much more cereal than I could eat so I had it for breakfast for the next two days as well. I reheated it in the microwave with a generous splash of soymilk, which made it sweet enough for me. I hate ingredients that have only one purpose because they fill up my cabinets and refrigerator and then I spend hours looking for recipes to use them up.

I have never used rye flour before, which made it more interesting when I opened the bag and saw what it looked like - kind of like gravel. Yuck. But no, it was good in the muffins. I can understand why the recipe was written with 1 cup rye flour and 1 cup all-purpose flour as I don't know if I could stand the taste of rye alone.

I did forget an ingredient - a teaspoon of cinnamon. I had it sitting out on the counter after making oatmeal cookies the other day, and I thought to myself, "oh good, it's already out," and then I forgot to put it in. Fortunately the muffins are still delicious - I was very concerned when I realized what I'd left out halfway through the baking time. Molasses is a unique flavor of its own, which I think helped to save it, and so did the bananas. But next time I will include it and I do think it will be better that way.