Tag Archives: granola

Bookshelf

Whole Grains for a New Generation

Kick off 2013 with delicious, healthy home cooking

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The arrival of the New Year means that it’s time for clean slates and refreshed habits. I always look forward to January as a chance to reset and start being a little more intentional about how I spend my time and what I eat. For me, this means getting a little more sleep and reintroducing vegetables and whole grains into my kitchen. (I have a bad habit of losing all restraint during the holiday season.)

In past years, redoubling my whole grain efforts has mostly meant that I eat a lot of sautes with brown rice, pots of vegetable soup with barley, and slabs of salmon over quinoa. While moderately healthy, tasty, and filling, these meals aren’t particularly inspired or exciting.

This year is different, thanks to Liana Krisoff’s new book, Whole Grains for a New Generation. As follow-up to her book Canning for a New Generation, this volume contains whole grain recipes for every meal of the day. It’s one of those books that made me want to leap up and start cooking. So far, I’ve made four recipes from it and I have at least another 20 earmarked for the very near future. MORE …

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Bringing the Trends Down to Earth

A DIY approach to the Nordic food craze

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Raw shrimp, moss foam, pine oil, and unfamiliar herbs. These are the hallmarks of a bigger trend currently sweeping Nordic-inspired restaurants all around the world. As a Dane I tend to ask myself: are these really the only things people should associate with the New Nordic Cuisine?

I say, emphatically, no. In fact, I am on a mission to show the world what New Nordic Cuisine can mean to a home cook. I’ve been teaching cooking classes on the topic for several years, and I’m surrounded daily by the research and development of the New Nordic diet and cuisine at my home university in Copenhagen, where I’m a graduate student in Food Science and Technology. The research underway is mainly focused on the potential nutritional benefits of the New Nordic diet. MORE …

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A Better Butter

Your slow cooker is the secret for sweet, spreadable treats

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The first summer I started canning in earnest, I made a lot of jam. I used more than fifty pounds of sugar and filled hundreds of jars. Many of those half-pints became favors for my wedding, but even with all that giving away, I still had a whole lot of jam left to consume throughout the year.

As much as I liked having a full pantry, I came to realize that it was too darn much for the just one jam lover to manage (no matter how much I try to convince him of their virtues, my husband does not cotton to the sweet spreads). And with all that sugar, this girl just couldn’t live on jam alone. What was a newly obsessed canner to do?

I quickly discovered that the answer was to switch my allegiance from super sweetened jams to fruit butters. Fruit butters start life as fruit purees or sauces (no dairy products are involved). You cook them slowly over low heat, concentrating the sweetness of the fruit and creating a spreadable texture by evaporating out much of the water. In the end, they need only a touch of sweetener (sugar, honey or agave nectar all work). On occasion, I also add a squeeze of lemon juice and a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg. MORE …