January 18, 2012
Porridge Mornings
For the new year, I resolved to start hauling my sorry self out of bed just a wee bit earlier to cook a hot breakfast for our family to eat together. Partly because a hot breakfast is a good enticement to get out of bed at all, because it’s the best way to meet cold, dark winter mornings, and because Stuart would appreciate some early morning company. Three weeks in, we’re quite hooked on the habit, and have been changing up the porridge so it never gets tired. We’ve had steel-cut oats, regular rolled oatmeal and quinoa and barley porridge. My favourite, though, is brown rice porridge, inspired by Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook which I had out of the library over Christmas (which was pretty good, actually, even though her porridges are pretty bland. Her sweet potato ravoli was delicious though). Brown rice porridge remarkably simple to prepare when we cook up some rice in the rice cooker the night before. In the morning, toss the cooked brown rice in a saucepan, cover the rice with milk and warm it up, adding 2 tbspns of corn starch for thickening. For all our porridges, we’ve found that a couple of teaspoons of vanilla extract is the key to deliciousness, along with honey, cinnamon and nutmeg, raisins, diced apples or bananas. And whatever is leftover can be reheated the next morning.
Easiest resolution ever.
January 5, 2012
We are pretty impressed with ourselves
Stuart is excited because he built the walls, I am excited because I was the visionary of the floor, and Harriet (who hasn’t seen and/or broken the finished product yet, because it was completed after her bedtime) was pretty enthuasiastic about the opportunity to eat some white glue.
Thanks to Ruth Ohi for the inspiration.
May 4, 2009
Sunshine
Today’s sunshine was also quite delicious. We had banana oatmeal pancakes, which have been my favourite Sunday morning treat since we first made them in December. (The recipe is from Chatelaine, and you can find it here.) They’re golden brown and wonderful, and we found using vanilla yogurt in the recipe is good. I will miss them after Baby is born, and we no longer have time to eat. Therefore, I will eat them as often as possible in the time remaining.
Tonight we also were able to sample the results
of our experiment in sorbet making. (Sorbet making, I suspect, is another activity we might see less of when Baby arrives.) The recipe is from Tessa Kiros’ Apples For Jam (which I cannot recommend enough), Mango sorbet from the yellow section, and though she calls for good quality mangoes (for this sorbet can only ever be as good as its mangoes, she says), we got fine results from our Ontario supermarket substandard trucked in from some southern hemisphere variety. It was also really easy, and though it required a day’s preparation, a little whisking every few hours never killed anyone. And homemade mango sorbet really is a sweet delight. (Could have used a bit more sugar, but really, what couldn’t?)
