Hunger, Part III: What I'm Cooking Today

My friend, Sabbath, a birth worker in Des Moines, has just requested, via Facebook, the recipes for what I'm cooking today ... My status line indicated I'd be carmelizing some onions, and putting bread up to rise.

The best thing is, I had already planned to come over here and blog about these recipes because they're FRUGAL! And healthy. And yummy.

So -- here's what we're eating this evening (before my Friends of Iowa Midwives Virtual Steering Committee Meeting!).

ONION SOUP -- a riff on a recipe found in one of my favorite cookbooks: The Soup Bible.

You'll need -- 3 lbs of yellow onions, 2 tbs butter (real), 2 tbs olive or canola oil (the lighter the better), 2 - 3 cloves of garlic, 4 - 6 cups of stock (chicken if you use it, light vegetable if you don't, bonus frugality points if you make your own!). Oh, and some brown sugar, salt and pepper, and a dash of vinegar (rice wine or apple cider are best). And I'm throwing in leftover potatoes (from our garden) and parsnips that I roasted for last night's dinner.

You'll do -- in a nice, large, heavy bottomed pot or dutch oven, melt the butter and oil together. Add the onions, which you've already peeled and sliced into rounds, and some salt. Slowly, slowly, slowly cook them - the technique I use is: turn up the heat hella high for about 2 minutes while stirring gently the whole time, getting them all nice and warmed up. Then turn the heat down as low as it goes, or maybe up 1 or 2, and cook for 30 - 90 minutes, stirring every 5 - 10, or 15 - 20 (you'll find I'm not that into precision) - as they turn soft, and then pale yellow, then golden hued. When they get golden hued, add a tbsp of that sugar - light brown works best, white in a pinch, and the 2 - 3 cloves of garlic, crushed. Keep cooking until the onions are darker golden. Then turn off the heat.

About an hour before you want to eat this soup, add the stock and a splash or two of the vinegar. Slowly slowly heat it up again, to a good warm temperature. Salt to taste, pepper, too.

Now this is a darn frugal soup. And Wyatt loves it. Tonight, we will add to it, as I noted above: roasted parsnips and potatoes. Also, some croutons from a bag we have in the cupboard. You could make your own (croutons) but I find that tedious. The recipe book suggests lots of gruyere cheese -- but boy is gruyere expensive, and I don't find that the soup needs any dairy to make it great. If you find that it does, my husband recommends a small spoon full of sour cream. And he's right - especially if you add potatoes, the sour cream is great.

MOLASSES BREAD WITH COOKED GRAINS -- I take this straight from the only cookbook you ever need, the best cookbook in the world: Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. . A great thing about this recipe is that making your own bread is frugal in the extreme (pennies on the dollar to bake instead of buy), its a good workout (kneading bread is hard work!), and this particular recipe uses yesterday's leftovers, too.

You'll need: an envelope of yeast, some sugar, 1/4 unsulfured molasses, 3 tbs canolal, corn or sunflower oil, salt, water, 2 cups all-purpose flour, 3 - 4 cups whole-wheat flour, and 1 1/2 cups leftover cooked graincereal (wheat, rice, oatmeal, seven-grain, etc.) Today, we're using what was left over of an amazing Snowy Saturday morning breakfast of Bob's Red Mill 4-Grain Cereal. (Just a side note: yesterday, I cooked that up, added maple syrup and some milk, and we felt like kings and queens eating that yummy, healthy, cheaper-than-the-packaged-flavored-oatmeal-that-you-buy-in-the-store porridge).

You'll do: stir the package of yeast into a 1/4 cup of warm water, add 1/2 tsp sugar. Set it aside in a warm place until it foams, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, butter or spray 2 8X10 loaf pans, and oil a big bowl for the dough. Note: This is a great step for kids - Wyatt absolutely adores watching the yeast bubble, and talking about how bread is "alive." In fact, now I feel guilty for doing this while he was asleep this morning - the kid loves to bake bread.

In a big bowl, combine 2 more cups warm water, the molasses, oil, 2 1/2 tsps salt, and the cooked cereal. Add the yesaty water, then the 2 cups of white flour, a cup at a time. Follow with a cup of a time of whole-wheat flour, stirring with a big wooden spoon (or gathering it with your hands) until the dough leaves the side of the bowl. Turn it out onto a floured surface, and knead until it is "smooth, but still a little tacky" (Says Deborah M). Add flour as you need to.

Note -- this is a pretty darn tacky dough. If you keep adding flour, it will get shaggy (which you don't want) and/or too dense (which you also don't want). Just have faith in the bread - adding up to 4 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour, in my experience, is OK.

Turn the dough into the oiled bowl, cover (with a warm damp cloth), and set aside in a warm enough place to rise until doubled - about 1 1/4 hours. In the last 15 minutes of rising, preheat oven to 375. Turn the dough out again and shape it into loaves, put in the loaof pans. Set aside again until doubled, about 40 - 50 minutes.

Bake for 50 minutes.

This is one of our favorite yeast breads. It is versatile (you can vary it almost anyway, depending on what cereal you use), high in iron (molasses!), and yummy. Its also really light, for such a fiber-rich and dense bread. And, it will be great with the onion soup tonight, and even better in the morning with some sweet butter and pumpkin butter (see my pumpkin butter guilt note, below...).

Enjoy!