Mamarati

So, the buckwheat waffles were completely and totally stuck to my waffle iron like nothing I’ve ever seen. The batter was like snot. It was so odd. I’ve never seen quite this consistency before. I had to scrape the bits out with a bamboo skewer. And this is a nonstick waffle iron that was lubed up.

I thought I’d try pancakes instead. The book suggested using a well-seasoned cast iron skillet. I own several of these. The small one is my favorite (I think it’s 6 inches, which is perfectly average. Ha.) I’ve had this thing forever. It couldn’t be more seasoned unless I spent a week deep frying butter in lard.

And still, the pancakes stuck to the skillet so much that I couldn’t even get a spatula underneath them to even get them out of the pan. So I let the pan cool and filled it with water. Half an hour later, I go to wash the pan and I turn it to dump the water out. The pancakes are still stuck to the pan, wholly intact and hardly even phased by the water.

So I still have some of the pancake batter left and I decide to try it in a teflon pan and they don’t stick this time. But they weighed about 80 pounds a piece. And these were tiny little silver dollar pancakes. I haven’t gotten the verdict from Jacob yet on how they ended up tasting.

So far, Jacob has been great at giving me feedback on foods. Cooking is kind of one of those things for me… I really like to do it, but food is expensive so I don’t like to screw it up. I have some guilt in that area. And then I hate serving things to my family that don’t taste good. And I never get a “this tastes like crap” response on any of my cooking, so I wonder if everyone is just being nice or if I’m really an OK cook or what.

Anyway, I told Jacob that I need to make sure that I get absolutely honest feedback with suggestions for improvement… examples of why something didn’t taste good or whatever. It helps that he spent a lot of the summer in the kitchen with me cooking like crazy. He learned a lot of things about food and how it all works together, consistency and texture, color, flavors that go and those that don’t go so much… So hopefully that will make these dishes work at some point.

I’m about to say screw buckwheat, though. That stuff is weird.

I’m also having a hard time finding buckwheat noodles that are all buckwheat and no standard wheat. It seems that Korean noodles don’t have any wheat, so I’m going to have to ask David where to find some of those since he’s my go-to guy on all things in that sphere. (Hint, Hint)

I have figured out that all this cooking is going to be a lot of experimentation.

I mean, I know how to cook, right? I know what an egg does. I know why you have to have sugar and salt in a yeast bread recipe. I know some of the science of cooking, people.

And yet, the first recipe I cook using these new, unconventional ways of cooking for a diversified rotary diet yielded hard little rocks instead of oatmeal cookies.

To be fair, I probably should have used a more conventional flour since this was actually a day where I could… and I used butter instead of oil because I could and I probably shouldn’t have done that. But the egg. Man… duplicating an egg is not as easy as it sounds.

Still, even though they looked like rocks and were crumbly outside, they were surprisingly soft inside and Jacob said they were good and that he’d eat them. I have to say that the consistency was more like a cereal bar, but not one of the nasty corn syrupy concoctions… more like odwalla bar meets kashi bar.

At any rate, even today after just the first few meals I realize that my entire repertoire of cooking skills will not be available to me each day. Ditto my entire pantry. It’s going to take some creativity and serious note taking. I may be throwing some things out after they fail miserably, but I guess that just means I will be taking away an entirely different set of skills with each recipe I try.

More later. I’m off to make some eggless buckwheat waffles. Wish me luck.

Starting with dinner on 10/11 (J will be at Dad’s this whole time)

Dinner:
Turkey and Sweet potato casserole, spinach (p245)

Breakfast (send to Dad’s):
Pear Amaranth Muffins (freeze for future, p127)

Lunch:
Apples, pistachios, coconut, turkey chunks, sweet potato casserole

Snacks:
Apple pie (p281), coconut, cashews

Shopping:
Turkey meat
Apples x 1
Pears x 2 or enough pureed pears to make 1 cup (baby food)
Coconut
Date or Beet sugar
Sweet potatoes x 4
Cashews (3/4 cup)
Dried Dates (1/4 cup)
Loose spinach
More amaranth flour (about 1 cup or so more)

Starting with dinner on 10/10

Dinner:
Honey battered shrimp
Fried rice and snow peas, sprouts

Breakfast (send to Dad’s):
Puffed rice cereal
Rice milk (make)
Peaches
Honey

Lunch (school):
Tuna, shrimp or salmon sushi (ginger OK)
Pineapple, oranges

Snacks:
Oranges, pineapples, peanuts,

Shopping List:
Tamari (make sure no wheat, etc.)
Peanuts
Pineapple
Oranges
Puffed rice cereal
Snow peas
Bean or alfalfa sprouts
Sushi pack
Peaches

Starting with dinner on 10/9

Dinner:
Roasted chicken with veggies
Make a chicken stock for freezing

Breakfast (to send to Dad’s):
Buckwheat waffles with walnuts
Maple syrup

Lunch (school):
Chicken soup made from leftovers (add buckwheat noodles if can find any w/o wheat)
Grapes and melons
Sunflower seeds

Snacks:
walnuts, melons, grapes, sunflower seeds, SunButter Organic

Shopping List:
Whole chicken x 2
Potatoes
Carrots
Celery
Grapes
Cantaloupe
Buckwheat noodles
SunButter Organic or other sunflower butter

Starting with dinner on 10/8

Dinner:
Beef sesame stir fry (in sesame oil) with onions, mushrooms, broccoli and garlic
Wheat noodles

Breakfast (Dad’s):
Oatmeal
Sugar
Plain Cow’s Milk to drink or add to oatmeal

Lunch (school):
Stir fry in thermos
Strawberries and blueberries
Mozzarella Cheese Cubes
Fruit Juice (juicer?)
Oatmeal Cookies (p248, freeze dough for future day 1 snacks)

Snack:
Cheese, Kiwi, Banana
Oatmeal Cookies

Shopping list:
Onions
Mushrooms (whole)
Strawberries
Blueberries
Beef for stir fry
Noodles
Kiwi fruit
Banana
Juice if I can find one (Options - kiwi, raspberry, banana, cranberry, blueberry, strawberry)
Masking tape
Kamut flour
Psyllium seed husks
Oat bran
Dried Cranberries