Wednesday, June 20, 2012

A whole foods kitchen is never boring

Cooking with real ingredients may be tiring, chaotic, and messy but boring it is not. And often it is fun and delicious.  Yesterday we made both graham crackers from scratch and Muscovado Sunflower Kernels.  The graham crackers were inspired by the July issue of Martha Stewart Living; I'm not comfortable with the ingredients in the normal store-bought boxes, and the nicer organic ones cost around $5.00.  By making our own we could use much better flours,  fats ( real butter) and sugars, but I do think these turned out more like shortbread cookies than crackers.  Next time I'll try a different recipe.

The roasted sunflower seeds were made by my 13-year-old daughter and totally her idea.  She'd seen the recipe in one of my current favorite cookbooks,  Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson; she informed me that she this was one of the few recipes in the book she thought she'd like, and that she was going to make it!!!  1 cup sunflower seeds are first toasted in a skillet over medium heat, and then just one tablespoon muscovado (we used turbinado) sugar, lemon zest and salt are stirred in until the sugar melts and the seeds are coated.  We thought they were perfect.  And with the world-wide peanut shortage, with no peanuts at our favorite food co-op, sunflower seeds are a great substitute snack.