Five-Grain Cream Waffles

This is the recipe that inspired the Multigrain Waffles on 101 Cookbooks.  It originally wasn't high on my list, to be honest, but I wanted to do a sort of comparison between the two.

A few days ago I put together the dry mix for this recipe so that it would be easier when I actually wanted to make them.  This worked out well for me.  I dumped the contents of the bag directly into the sifter and there was no measuring to be done whatsoever.  All I had to do was blend together the heavy cream and eggs, then mix them into the dry ingredients.  Yes, heavy cream.  50 calories per tablespoon.  Not the best nutritionally, but again, I want to try all these recipes as-is so that when I modify them I know whether I am completely ruining them.

The waffles were delicious but honestly, a little boring.  I definitely prefer the Multigrain Waffle recipe with the poppy seeds.  I think these would taste delicious with fresh strawberries - like strawberries and cream.  Yum!

The one thing I do want to stress about this recipe is that I can understand how it inspired the multigrain waffles.  It inspired me, too.  Mostly to severely cut the calories down, but also to add my own twist to it - kind of like a blank canvas waiting for some art to be made on it.  I've got a small notebook where I write down my recipe ideas, since I'm not too capable yet of putting things together entirely on my own, but I have a few thoughts that will go down in there.  I'm looking forward to continuing to work with these different whole-grain flours to learn more about them and how they work.  I found a great substitution list on the Bob's Red Mill website that should help a lot.  (If you are seeing black diamonds with question marks in place of numbers, go to View > Character Encoding and try selecting Western.)

I need to stop baking and get back to cooking actual meals.  Expect to see a few interesting things coming up, maybe over the weekend.  I've been flipping through some other books (as hard as it is to put down Good to the Grain, there are no dinners in there) and I've found a few things that I plan to try out in the next few days.

Garlic and Rosemary Roasted Cannellini Beans

As you may remember from my stuffed red pepper post, I do not like beans.  I WANT to like beans.  So I am always looking for bean recipes in the hopes that one day I will develop a taste for beans. 

I found something I just had to try on askgeorgie.com.  (In addition to extremely healthy dietitian-created recipes, she posts answers to nutrition questions - you can send in a question and she will answer it.)  Going through her recipe archive I found a recipe for Garlic and Rosemary Roasted Cannellini Beans.  I love crunchy salty snacks, so I had to try it.

Wow!  I was so surprised at what happened here.  They came out really well.  They are delicious! 

I followed the directions.  After 40 minutes of roasting they were pretty good.  But some of the bigger ones were not crunchy.

I put them back in the oven for another ten minutes or so, and when they came out they were a darker color and much crunchier.

I was standing next to the stove waiting for them to cool down and then I just ate them all.

I will definitely be making these again.  Especially if you are going to use the oven anyway, it is a great low-effort snack.  I would love to experiment with other types of beans and flavors.  Maybe some southwestern-flavored beans?

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?