stacey . smoore . the staceyfish . 
Life in a Northern Town: the exploits of an ecstatic Alaskan
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You'll find these staples in my kitchen all the time. I make most of these regularly, usually on Sunday for consumption or use throughout the week.
Muffins get a bad rap, and none more so than bran muffins. See, regular muffins are sugar-and-oil fests, full of empty calories, and most bran muffins are healthy but, well, made of twigs. Can there be a happy medium between these two extremes?
Of course there can be! Enter my breakfast-on-the-go juggernaut, the 150% whole grain banana nut muffin! Now, you may be asking yourself how the hell something can be 150% whole grain, and here's your answer: grains are made up of the germ, the bran, and the endosperm. White flour and other processed grains get poo-pooed (and deservedly so) because the nutritious and tasty germ and bran are removed, leaving behind the starchy endosperm which, while semantically being a complex carbohydrate, is treated by your body just like sugar, a simple carbohydrate. While most muffins are made of only white flour, this recipe is made up of whole-wheat flour (germ, bran, endosperm), oats (again, germ, bran, endosperm), wheat germ, and oat bran. Lots of good-parts-of-the-grain yumminess, see?
An astute reader like yourself may have picked up on the fact that while a couple of those ingredients are the fiber- and nutrient-rich parts of the grain, they do not in fact contain all three parts. So I guess it's not technically whole-grain, but really, when you're only removing the bad stuff and keeping the good stuff it's easy to see that it has way more of the good stuff than the bad stuff, so it's like an endosperm with twice the bran and twice the germ, and hence, 150% whole grain! Don't argue with me on this one, I majored in math and I'll come up with some convoluted argument to prove that It Is So.
So that's enough science geekery, let's stop talking nutrition and start talking yumminess!
This recipe is awesome because it manages to be low-fat without tasting overly low-fat. Yes, when you bite into these muffins you can tell that they are healthy and nutritious, but they are still wonderfully moist and flavorful. That's because applesauce, oil's favorite understudy, has gotten its chance to shine in this recipe, and when it teams up with the bananas you get a moist, remarkably un-twig-like consistency. When you add in things like toasted pecans, flax, raisins, and the grains, you get a complex flavor profile that keeps your tastebuds happy.
These are ideal for early-morning athletes and snooze-button-hitters since they are easy to take with you and eat, ensuring you get those morning calories your metabolism needs to function properly throughout the day. I always eat one on the way to swimming in the morning and if I think there's a chance I won't get to eat my daily oatmeal I always bring along a couple extra to tide me over until lunch. That's another benefit to this muffin's ingredients: in addition to being flavorful, they also keep you full for a long time. So what's not to love? Skip that chemical delight breakfast you were going to grab on your way out the door and eat one of these instead!
Click here for the recipe for "150% whole grain low-fat banana nut muffins" »
Like so many other things worth eating, once you've had homemade salad dressing you can't go back.
I learned this lesson when I made my first batch of balsamic vinaigarette. When you buy this stuff off the shelf, it's overly sweet, oily, bland, and one-dimensional tasting. But when you make it yourself, it's wonderfully assertive, bold but not overpowering, subtle, and complex.
Plus it's super-easy to make.
Are you sold yet? Seeing the stuff in action ought to do the trick....
Bread baking has become a bit of an obsession of mine. As I mentioned in my writeup for The Herbed Bird, I started doing it around Thanksgiving when I got really, really tired of store-bought bread and realized that I could probably do a much better job myself.
Well, I turned out to be right. Since I had never kneaded before and didn't have anyone to show me how to do it, it took me a couple of months to really figure out what the heck I was doing. My first couple of loaves were, well, bricks, but they were much better tasting bricks than the stuff you buy from the grocery store! I probably wasn't doing myself any favors by skipping the refined flour either -- ask just about anyone who bakes bread and they'll tell you that whole wheat bread is much more difficult to make. I didn't care -- I was going to make delicious whole wheat bread and that was final.
I did see many improvements in my bread over time, as my mom came to visit and showed me how to knead, as I read more on the subject, and finally, as I bought the cookbook that taught me just about everything that matters about whole-grain bread baking, Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. The acquisition of my Kitchen Aid stand mixer might have something to do with it too. Once all that came together, I started making what I would consider very good bread.
About a month ago though, I started making what I would call outstanding bread. I credit this entirely to the low temperatures long-rise method outlined in the book mentioned above. By letting the dough ferment for 24 hours instead of the usual 3, you get incredibly light dough whose flavors have developed marvelously without any of that sour taste that is so often found in bread. Let me assure you that you do not need to stuff two teaspoons of yeast into your dough to get your loaf to rise! I also find it much easier to fit this rising-deflating pattern into my daily life. I can make bread any day of the week with this method because I do not need to block off six hours to attend to dough that must be deflated every hour or so. Another bonus: for reasons that I can't explain, the loaf is more nutritious and keeps longer than its rushed cousin.
So what are you waiting for??? Go make this loaf! I find it's perfect for anything from sandwiches to toast to eating with soup to dipping in olive oil. You (and anyone you bestow this magnificent loaf upon) can thank me later.
I've always been a breakfast person. Not really in the way that many other Americans are, where they like lots of eggs and bacon and other really unhealthy and non-nutritious foods, but more in the way that I like to get something healthy in my tummy that will stick with me until my mid-morning snack. This is sufficiently different, versatile, receptive to substitutions, and, of course, yummy, to meet all of my needs. They do take longer to cook than their gloppy rolled cousin, so I cook a week's worth at a time and reheat as I need it. Nowadays it's impossible to open my fridge without finding a massive batch of these oats, just waiting for their turn to be consumed.
And just look at them! It's easy to see why!
Click here for the recipe for "Indulgent Irish oatmeal with berries" »
Be careful: homemade chicken stock is another one of those "you can never go back" recipes.
I remember a little over a year ago, I made minestrone soup for the first time. It's one of my favorite soups, but I couldn't understand why it was so..... blase. Despite the fact I had used fresh ingredients and used the proper technique, it wasn't worth making again, and I stuck with my usual soup staple, Provencal Vegetable Soup.
About a year later I was having some friends over for an Italian night - caprese salad, various pastas with homemade sauces, and affogatos. Something was missing and (being ignorant of the traditional Italian primi and secondi) I decided to add in minestrone soup.
So I tried again. Talk about night and day! It was like the first batch I had made was anti-minestrone and if the two batches had ever met they would have annihilated each other. The only difference? The fantasmagorically delicious minestrone was made with homemade stock instead of commercial chicken broth.
Every recipe I've used with this stock has sung with flavor. Why? That flavor comes from tons of fresh ingredients and no salt. It's a recipe that I've adapted from more traditional chicken stock recipes to fit the way I cook. I roast a bird one week, save the carcass, skin, and fond and after I roast another bird the next week I combine the two carcasses with any leftover meat and tons of aromatics. This way I'm getting maximum use out of those chickens with minimal waste.
And it is so worth it!
I used to think that I did a fair amount of cooking for myself. Sure, I ate pre-boxed cereals like Grape-Nuts and used mass-produced bread and turkey breast for my sandwiches, but surely that doesn't count, right? You can't make those things for yourself!!!
Then one day I woke up and realized, "Wait a minute, it is not natural for turkey breast to come in this shape. Plus this stuff doesn't have nutrition labels I can read, so god only knows what they put in it!" Luckily, I had this epiphany around Thanksgiving and I had just gotten myself a brand new roasting pan. After eating leftover homemade turkey sandwiches for a couple of days, I decided something in my daily lunch routine had to change. "What the hell," I thought. I had just started baking my own bread, so I figured I might as well go whole hog.
So I looked in some cookbooks and magazines for some inspiration. Some suggested brining before roasting, but one of the big reasons I decided to start doing this myself was to get away from all that sodium. Some suggested marinades, but I wanted a (relatively) quick fix. Others suggested lemon, but that tires pretty quickly for me.
Then I remembered our Thankgiving Turkey Trifecta: Sage. Rosemary. Thyme. And no, I am not going to Scarborough Fair!
Eureeka! It's genius. So I minced up these fresh herbs and some garlic (because garlic makes everything better). I drizzled just a tad of olive oil over the mix to make it more paste-like and easy to handle. Instead of stuffing the cavity (as is the fate of the turkey), I borrowed an idea from Cook's Illustrated and used my fingers to loosen the skin from the breast and thighs (they actually suggest using a chopstick to do this because "fingers are more likely to tear the skin" but I disagree -- your fingers can bend. I've never torn the skin with my hand) and rubbed the meat with the herbs generously. Then I prepped the limbs for the oven, turned it breast-down (this helps the white and dark meat reach safe eating temperatures at the same time), and popped it in the oven. Twenty minutes later I flipped it on its back and let it continue to cook until the instant-read thermometer said it was done.
I will swear up and down that this is the best sandwich meat ever. After cooking your own lunchmeat, I promise you will never be able to go back to the salty, processed, unnaturally shaped abomination in your grocer's deli counter again. I also promise that after you use the leftovers to make your own stock, you'll never buy that salty, watered-down abomination in a can off the shelf again either.
