Millet Muffins

These Millet Muffins are from the sampler PDF for Heidi Swanson's new cookbook.  I made them almost immediately after seeing the sampler.  And they are SO GOOD!  They reminded me of corn muffins.  The lemony flavor is delicious and the millet adds a crunch, a much softer crunch than I thought it would.  Millet is one of those grains that is good for you, and you should eat it, but there's not all that much you can do with it.  I had some in the fridge (it's kinda old) so I will make these muffins to use it up.  They are super quick and easy, tasty and healthy.  Next time I will try using applesauce instead of some of the butter, just to see what happens.  Butter is good and all, but if I can cut down on it, I will feel better about eating two of these the minute they come out of the oven :)

Coming soon in my next post: photos from my brand-new digital SLR!  Yay!

Big Curry Noodle Pot

In a little over a month, Heidi Swanson's new cookbook, Super Natural Every Day,  is coming out.  I am very, very, VERY tired of waiting for it.  She's posted an image of some of the pages, but you can't read the words beyond the title.  Very recently she posted a sampler PDF of six recipes from the book.  (I've already made one, but more on that later.)  I'm mostly caught up with her website - I've made probably 50 or 60 recipes from it, and while I have a few on the list, I'm waiting for more inspiration.  Out of all the food blogs I read (see the sidebar for my list), Heidi's is my favorite.  It got me started cooking, fueled my love of natural ingredients and whole grains and fresh produce, and continues to inspire me with new recipes every week or so.  While I'm waiting for the book to come out, I've been going through her last book, Super Natural Cooking, looking for some fun things to try.

I made the Big Curry Noodle Pot from the book partly because we have been eating a lot of Thai curry over the past few months, and partly because of the recommendations on the 101 Cookbooks Library.  I happened to have everything on hand except the peanuts, which only required a quick trip around the corner.  It worked out well for a weeknight.  Now that I've tried it as-written, there are a whole bunch of things I'd love to try out with this.  Most importantly, it was not spicy enough.  The recipe calls for some Thai red curry paste as well as turmeric.  Too much turmeric, I think, and not enough curry paste.  I might try out some red curry powder instead of the turmeric, or just more of the paste.  I would also like to try this with chicken or shrimp.  The tofu was better left over than it was right after I'd made it, but I still am just not a huge fan of home-cooked tofu.  Plus, Ken does not like it.  I think chicken would be a better fit than shrimp here, but either could work.  One last idea - instead of chopping the onions, I'd like to try them thinly sliced instead.  The noodles fought the onions for fork space, and the length of the noodles gave them an advantage.  It was difficult to get much onion, or if you did, there weren't many noodles.  I think thinly slicing them would make it easier to grab a bunch of each.

Giant Chipotle White Beans

I have been trying to eat more beans lately, but so far I have limited myself to chili and soup.  In an effort to try something new, I decided to make the Giant Chipotle White Beans from 101 Cookbooks, which are large white beans baked in a chipotle tomato sauce with flecks of kale, topped with feta and drizzled with a cilantro pesto.  I skipped the bread crumbs that are in the original recipe - I didn't feel that they would really add anything to the dish, so I just left them out.

I have to say, I made these a while ago.  At least two weeks ago.  I've been really, really busy with school and I have barely been cooking, let alone writing about it.  But I remember that they tasted good.  Specifically, the sauce was delicious.  I'm not big enough on beans yet to really love a dish that consists only of beans.  (I'll get back to you after I try some of my Rancho Gordo beans, which have not been sitting in a silo for 10 years like the giant limas I used for this recipe.  I have a feeling it will make a difference.)  So I think it would be interesting to try half beans, half something else.  I'm not yet sure what exactly, but pasta comes to mind.  So kind of like a baked ziti with beans and Mexican flavors.  I don't know, it works in my brain.

Anyway, this was tasty, it was.  But I wish I hadn't made so much, because we threw most of it away.  :(  I'm not sure how it would have held up in the freezer, but maybe next time I'll try that.