January 2017 – Make me eat my words.

I love to cook, about that there can be no doubt. I love to eat well. I love to play with ingredients and flavours. I love the challenge of making something tasty out of what’s on hand. I love to step back and admire a lovely, lovingly prepared plate of food.

This means I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. To make that a bit easier, my kitchen just got a make-over. Pragmatically, we needed a few things to accommodate our family’s unique needs and wants.

High on the list of reasons for the renovation was that we needed more pantry space and a better approach to manage meal planning. More than once in the early days of our blended family adventure I was reduced to tears trying to make everyone happy with what we had in the cupboard. Having to come up with a meal on the spot every day was stressful to say the least.

One of the boys has some anxiety about food because he was raised with food as a battle ground. It is my firm belief that forcing a child to eat will only create a picky eater. No one, not even a child, likes to have no control over what they put in their mouths.

The best planning tactic I found to alleviate my stress and the boys’ anxiety is to write the meal plan for the two weeks my husband’s sons are with us on our calendar so we can all see it ahead of time. I leave the experimenting and improvisation for when it’s just my husband, my son and I because we have fewer issues with food.

Meal planning feels like a chore most of the time; partly because the lack of spontaneity removes the creative side of cooking that I love so much. As a parting solution, the contractor for our kitchen renovation made the meal planning fun for me. She suggested I hang a chalk board on the tiled wall next to the stove to write the meals on.

I bought myself a box of coloured chalk and am having so much fun writing menus it is ridiculous.

Now the boys don’t just know what’s for dinner, they get to decide if the meal is as good as advertised – then decide if the chef or the artist get higher marks for presentation.

sugar — The lovely people with the UofA’s heritage chicken program sent me some pictures for Christmas.

I adopted a chicken this past fall. The University of Alberta has a heritage chicken program that helps fund its work by adopting out their flock. It’s a brilliant plan. Adoptive chicken parents get eggs, and the University keeps a unique breed of chicken alive. My chicken is a Brown Leghorn that I named Sugar.

We got our first eggs Jan 5th.

I gave these first eggs the honour of centre stage in our dinner and made poached eggs on a bed of barley risotto, with flat bread and a spinach salad to round out the meal.

A while back I found that I get a better poached eggs by adding touch of vinegar in he water, but the real determinant of a nice looking poached egg is the freshness of the egg itself. These eggs were fresh and poached beautifully. Barley risotto has a nutty taste that complimented the creamy egg.

first-sugar-egg-meal — This is my plate. The guys had two eggs each and more risotto.

Sugar’s Eggs with Barley Risotto

You’ll need one part pot barley to 2-2 1/2 parts liquid. I chose vegetable broth.

I used a cup of barley. It yielded four servings.

Pot barley
Stock
Carrot, celery, onion finely diced
Garlic, minced
Another diced veggie (I chopped up pea pods)
White wine
Oil
Thyme

Cook the diced onion, celery and carrot in a deep frying pan. When those are cooked but not browned throw in a little minced garlic and stir that for a second. Then add a glug of white wine – maybe 1/4C. Add thyme. Throw in the barley and stir. Pour in stock to cover the barley. Keep the liquid on a low simmer, stirring frequently. Continue to add broth to keep the barley covered as the liquid is absorbed. The barley will be lightly chewy when it is done, but not crunchy. It takes 20-40 minutes depending on temperature. It is done when it is done.

The other vegetable goes into the risotto nearer the end. Pea pods take no time to cook so I added them right at the end when the risotto was done. I stirred them in, turned off the heat, and covered the pan while I poached the eggs. That was enough to steam the chopped pea pods.

Make the salad. I made a simple dressing out of olive oil, white wine vinegar, dijon mustard and a little salt and pepper. I keep small glass jars for this, put the oil, acid and seasoning in and shake it in the jar.

When the barley is done and covered, bring the water for the eggs to a boil in a shallow pan. Put a dash of vinegar in the water. Poach the eggs in the boiling water.

Serve the eggs on a bed of barley.

Month: January 2017

Creativity in the kitchen – menu planning made fun

Eggs, eggs, eggs for dinner