Uncle John's Notes, Part 3

Our last installment from Uncle John's guest post in which he finds the ultimate muesli recipe...for now!

"One day a few years back, back in the gourmet section, actually the gourmet oatmeal section, if you can believe it, was some 5-grain oatmeal! Hey, I said to myself, that’s on the right road to muesli!

(no sample, I ate it all!)

Muesli Recipe #4:
Start with a base layer of Cheerios in your breakfast bowl.
Then add a layer of Old Wessex 5 Grain Cereal.
If you have some, put on a thin layer of Oat Bran.
Then add another layer of with Cheerios.
Top off with raisins and wheat germ.
Add milk, let is soak up for a couple of minutes, and stir lightly. Then eat!

Old Wessex 5 Grain is really a fancy oatmeal, so it’s supposed to be cooked like oatmeal. But we’re talkin’ muesli here, so skip the cookin’! Sorry about the missing sample in the picture above (I used all the 5 Grain but saved the box just so you could see it here), but basically it looks like oatmeal, heavy on the oats, with a few other flakes and grains mixed in.
Fortunately, you GrandMom discovered a good Oat Bran! More about that in a minute!
But first, here’s the wheat germ:

And I’m sure you recognize the raisins:

Some people call raisins “empty calories” … a bit light on nutritional values. Fine. So remember to use fresh fruit whenever you can. But raisins may not be all that bad; after all, some great claims have been made for grape skins, so perhaps their day will come.

Now back to oat bran. If you can’t get good oat bran, the mix can get a bit weird tasting. Yeah, even for me! Unfortunately, a weird box of oat bran seems to last forever.

Fortunately, as I said earlier, a couple of years ago, your GrandMom put me on to a good source for Oat Bran cereal. I think it’s really supposed to be served hot, cooked like oatmeal. Whatever. Anyway, it’s a long way from Pablim and gummy oat bran. We’re talkin’ adult oat bran here! Clears out them old arteries really good. And this Hodgson Mill Oat Bran is mighty fine tastin’ and crunchy too! If we can get out here in the sticks, you can get it too, no problem. Try some!

Muesli Recipe #5:

This is definitely a step up. Layer Cheerios, Hodgson Mills Oat Bran, Old Wessex 5 Grain, and more Cheerios. Kick it up a notch with some raisins and a couple of teaspoons of wheat germ.

Now we’re getting’ a hint of muesli!
So that’s been my home-made cheap-o imitation muesli for the past few years. Much improved from the gummy ol’ oat bran, but, oh, still what a long way from the real Familia!


Oh, yeah! That bring me back to what I discovered in the grocery store just recently … right next to the Hodgson Mill’s Oat Bran!

You got it! Made-In-American Muesli! No more shipping grain to Switzerland and back! Low carbon footprint! Heck, it’s just pain patriotic, even if it ain’t quite miserly! Easy to prepare! Mighty tasty too!

See, it even looks good in that little glass sample bowl!

Muesli Recipe #6:
Get that Hodgson Mills Muesli! Of course, I dress mine up with Cheerios (layered below and above), Hodgson Mills Oat Bran, wheat germ, and raisins.

Feel free to experiment! Be sure to check out some fresh fruits! Remember to try yogurt instead of milk, too!

And that bring us to another variant. Hodgson Mills has another goody:

Think of this multi grain as a souped-up oat bran. Try it anywhere your using some oat bran. It’s got oats and wheat bran and even wheat germ plus soy grits, so why not go for it? Go ahead! Mix it right in!

A base layer of Cheerios

Next, a layer of Hodgson Mills Oat Bran
Or Multi Grain
Then a layer of Hodgson Mills Muesli

Top with another layer of Cheerios

Top off with Wheat Germ and Raisins

Don’t forget the Wheat Germ!

Now you’re ready to add milk, go fetch the morning paper or pour a glass of milk and (another glass of) orange juice, slice up some fresh fruit, and then: ENJOY!

• • • •

Now, that was an awful lot of work to get down to Muesli Recipe #6! And you may think that that is the Muesli Recipe for Talia!

But, NO, that would be too easy! How is that supposed to compete with farm-fresh eggs from the back-yard chickens?? And sausages, bacon, and pancakes, not to mention all the other great breakfast goodies on Talia’s Table??

No, this long, long personal family oral history of muesli, that really should have remained hidden from the light of day, is just a starting point. Hopefully there’s something that can be learned from all my muesli mistakes! If mere muesli can be such a challenge for so many years, just think of the possibilities for all the other foods – the foods we know and love and all the foods we haven’t tried and all the foods around the world that we haven’t even heard of yet! Now there’s food for thought!

O ahead! Try out Muesli Recipe #6! But keep on going! Experiment with it! Add something new! Substitute this for that and that for this! Try some new combinations! Think what might be good to try! Was there something really good in another recipe that might be worth trying here? Or the other way around?

For some folks, a trip is not just getting to the destination, but the journey itself. So have fun traveling all around the World of Food. Have fun exploring the by-ways, the less traveled roads, and the trekking trails! Keep looking for great foods, new foods, healthy foods, yummy foods!

Keep some notes on your experiments and food travels! And be sure to keep us posted on your favorite dishes! I bet they’ll be a lot better than any muesli I ever mixed up!
Happy Spring! Happy Cooking! And Good Eats!
Uncle John"

Uncle John's Notes, Part 2

Part 2 of Uncle John's guest post, in which frugality is the mother of (muesli) invention....

"I don’t know quite how it happened, but it’s true that I had been known for gluing my Cheerios together with the baby cereal Pablim (from the Latin “pabulum,” meaning foodstuff – just ask Aunt Janie!), so I wouldn’t have to fish around the bowl for the last few Cheerios floating around on the milk. I probably like the taste too! Seemed a good idea to me! Worked good for me! Don’t know why nobody else ever seemed to like it!

So, what to do about that expensive Familia? Well, if nobody liked me mixing Pablim with my Cheerios, how about if I matured my breakfast formula and took it upscale with some fancy gourmet Familia? Toss out the Pablim and IN with the Familia! And keep the Cheerios, of course.

Guess what! I sold it! My parents bought it! Extend the Familia by mixing it and stretching it with Cheerios! You know, kind of like a Hamburger Helper, but for breakfast cereal!
Cool! So here is:

Muesli Recipe #2:
Familia and Cheerios! With milk. And raisins. Quick, easy, and simple. Layer of Cheerios, thin layer of Familia, another layer of Cheerios, and then some raisins to top it off. Add milk, let is sit a couple of minutes while pouring a glass of milk and a glass of orange juice. Then stir lightly and enjoy!

Finally, Mom knew I wouldn’t be eating Cheerios and Pablim all the way through high school! Wow, was she ever happy! That’s a nice thing about Moms: they can be so happy over even those little things!

So anyway, my Dad’s comment about all that grain being shipped to Switzerland and back still stayed with me. Not that it really worried me or anything, but it was always there lurking in the back of my mind.

By the time I got out of the Navy and started graduate school, there I was trying to live off the GI Bill and go to school. Aunt Max and I didn’t have much money, so we got part-time jobs and worked our way through school. Watching all our pennies while we studied. And guess what? NO budget for fancy Familia. Just plain Cheerios. After all, a married guy just isn’t allowed to mix Pablim in his Cheerios, you know. Tough times.

Oh, but thank goodness for hippies and health food! We stumbled onto a health food store in Boulder, Colorado, that had big barrels of various grains for sale at reasonable prices. So I tried my hand at making my own muesli from scratch. I tried and tried and tried, but I never got close to Familia. Yeah, I know, I left out the sugar and, of course the pricey stuff like almonds and honey. But nobody else had to eat my mix (nobody would eat it!), so I was free to continue the experiment for years, even though true success successfully eluded my efforts.

Muesli Recipe #3:
Make your own muesli from scratch! Check the labels of products like Familia and any other cereal mixes you like. See also products listed below. You’ll make better progress than I ever did if you skip all my weird experiments in Boulder. I can’t remember what was in ‘em anyway, so you’re saved!

Anyway, years and year later, here we are in the backwaters of New Jersey, just a block away from the Great Swamp, and guess what I see turn up in our little local grocery store?

Made-in- … ah, err, … Oops! Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself! Some other stuff turned up before the big one …"

Check back tomorrow for the conclusion!

Notes from Uncle John - Muesli Recipe #1

We recently received these "Notes From Uncle John, A Life-Long Breakfast Quest" and had to share - be warned, you'll have to check back for the subsequent chapters and recipes!

"Hi, Talia!
As you may have heard from your Mom and GrandMom, I haven’t been nearly as creative about breakfast as you all! Yes, it’s true, I’ve been eating Cheerios for breakfast for years and years and years – practically since the day I was born. Well, perhaps only since I was 5 or so. But that was a while ago.

But it hasn’t been just Cheerios. I don’t remember how it happened, maybe my parents took us to some fancy restaurant (like the Lincoln Hotel?) for a holiday brunch, or we were on vacation out in Colorado and caught a fancy brunch somewhere  (The Boulderado?) … I just can’t remember. Anyway, somehow, there was a big bowl of some funny cereal and fruit mixed up in some yogurt. And somehow, somebody got me to try a little dollop, even though I wasn’t known for trying anything new back then … must not have been any Cheerios laid out on the brunch table. Hey, it was pretty good! My Mom probably felt faint, but I’m sure she hid it well!

So when we got back home from wherever we were, Mom helped me look for muesli cereal. Eventually she found some at one of the big grocery stores – not in the cereal isle, but way over in the corner with the fancy gourmet foods and stuff. It was the “Original Recipe” Swiss Müesli Cereal called Familia. Müesli was invented by the Swiss Doctor Maximilian Bircher-Benner back around 1900 as a health food for his patients at his health spa and clinic. Who knows how close Familia is to his “original recipe!” Turns out he was copying what someone had served him while hiking around the Alps with his wife! So who really knows where the “original muesli” came from!

Familia is really good, with oat flakes, flour from wheat, rye, and barley, apple flakes, hazelnuts, roasted almonds (oh, I love almonds, don’t you?), wheat germ (tastes a bit nutty), and of course, sugar and honey. With all that great stuff in it, how could it possibly not be great?

Muesli Recipe #1:

The easy way to eat Familia is to just pour some milk on it, add a little fresh fruit, or, in a pinch, even some raisins. I like to let it soak up the milk for a few minutes before eating it. You can experiment with using yogurt instead of milk and trying it with different fruits. Yummy!

Ok, now for the other news. Familia is so authentic and Swiss that it’s actually made in Switzerland. So that makes it a bit expensive. It’s made over in the Swiss Alps somewhere and then it’s got to be shipped all the way over here so we can buy it and eat it.

Also note that it is not a low-calorie food; the suggested serving size of ½ cup, about 55 grams, is good for 220 calories. Those calories are no problem for your and your brother, but once you’re a great aunt or uncle, that’s something that you may need to keep an eye on.

As an active and growing kid, a ½ cup may just not be enough for a really good breakfast. As my Mom and Dad undoubtedly noticed, heck, I sure did, those little boxes of Familia didn’t last me real long. About 6 “suggested servings” per box. And as Mom and Dad did notice, and I probably did not, that little box of Familia cost a lot more than a giant box of Cheerios. So my pure big-bowl Familia breakfasts didn’t last too long.

My Dad has also observed that the Swiss are not know for growing lots and lots of grains like oats and wheat and rye. When you think of Switzerland, what do you think of? Chocolates? Cuckoo clocks? More chocolates? International banks and gold bricks? More chocolates? Swiss watches? More chocolates? Alpine skiing? More chocolates? Yeah! Oh, but no waves of amber wheat fields … yep, they’re over here in our mid-western states.

My Dad though it was really crazy for us to raise all these grains here in the USA, ship them to Switzerland to get them turned in to Familia, and then ship the Familia with all those grains back to the USA, so we could buy it and eat it. These days that known as excessive carbon footprint for all that shipping. Back in the day, avoiding all that shipping all over the world was just frugal.

But plain frugal put the kibosh on my big bowls of Familia for breakfast. What was a hungry kid to do?"

Check back tomorrow for part 2 of Uncle John's guest post!

Operation Lunch

Do you have a good idea for lunches?

I feel we've fallen into a rut when it comes to school lunches for lunches.  Although nobody has complained yet, I feel the end-of-the-year blahs setting in.  Ham and cheese for one, PB&J for the other.  Assorted snacks, fruits, crackers and off they go.

I have visions of baking a batch of wholesome, full-grain (yet delicious!) bars on the weekend - or coming up with some more inventive components, but I just haven't put much imagination into this meal lately. 

They eat pretty early in the day, so I don't mind including a yogurt or string cheese, even though there's no refrigeration, but I feel like we need some less-packaged, more interesting ideas.

Any thoughts?

Tuesday Night Off

Some nights, you make broiled fish and pan-tossed zucchini while the kids go outside and play.  Then you call them for dinner.  Because it's Spring.

Monday Night: Soufflé

It’s Monday night: work meeting night.

Sunday night I was wondering what I would make for dinner – it’s always a tight fit between 5 and 7 – and soufflé rose to the top of the list. I know that sounds crazy – 2000s xanax meets 50’s housewife crazy - and that’s what I would have thought a couple of months ago too. But then I read this article about soufflés.

It was written by someone who lived in France and she waxed eloquent about the joys of her soufflé nights in the home of an ordinary-working-woman-French-host-mother. Could this be the French equivalent of pizza? I was intrigued. So, a Saturday a while back, I gave it a whirl.


The article appealed to me for a several reasons. I lived in France for a year in high-school and have fond memories of the (sometimes interminable) meals, the conversations and…the food. Another reason? I have chickens, 4 of them, and I am always looking for ways to use up eggs. My son is an avowed egg-hater, so anything that could tempt him into eating eggs would be a boon.

The best reason though? It’s a soufflé. I have this unexplained attraction to things that puff and morph in the oven, that have to be served immediately and the challenge cinches the deal.

Turns out, the basic cheese soufflé is not all that hard.

And it’s a great dish with kids. Even my son loves soufflé. Perhaps because (in his words) “you have to eat it as soon as it’s done!” or perhaps because of the cheese.

My daughter is an egg-separating fiend. I taught her how to tip the cracked egg into her hand and let the white fall through her fingers. Amazingly for a child who doesn’t particularly like to have her fingers dirty, this is a pleasure.  So we whipped up some eggs.

Following the recipe exactly the few times, it came out just fine. I don’t have a soufflé dish, we used a small dutch oven and that worked just fine. We’ve experimented a bit with spices and different cheeses and it’s been a success each time.

This evening, I took a cue from the French host mother I never met and pulled it off. The 25 minutes it takes to cook provided just enough time to clean the dishes and we were ready to eat. Some salad and a yogurt with jam for dessert and Voila! Monday night was a success.

I wouldn’t try this on a deadline for the first time, but if it falls flat, we’ll call it a quiche.

Keeping it Light

For a while there, it was all about French cooking. Between Julie and Julia, butter made a comeback, boeuf bourguignon was all the rage, and we even hosted a poulet-en-croute dinner for a few friends. My favorite thing from Mastering the Art of French Cooking though, is the omelet.

I love reading that book because it works as a cooking instruction book and as a delightful diversion. I have a tendency to wander from the page, try new ingredients and methods, not always with the desired results. My mother handed down her love of an orderly kitchen along with the notion that recipes are “suggestions”. This helps me a lot when it is 6 o’clock on a weeknight, everyone’s hungry, and I need a substitute ingredient for whatever we’re making. It also encourages creative use of the pantry (another hand-me-down talent). 

The downside is that it's easy for me to forget to learn the basics somewhere along the line.

Omelets are about as basic as you can get. Eggs, butter, salt and heat. Then there’s the flip, just to keep it interesting.  If you follow a Julia Child recipe, it turns out just like it should. 

I read My Life in France first, and there was so much attention devoted to the omelet, I was hooked. I ordered a set of Mastering from my favorite used book place and lugged them around on car trips, read them at my desk over lunch, too late at night and so forth. Then it was time.

My friends came over after work for omelets before going to see the movie. We had a delicious salad fresh from the winter garden, French wine (bien sur!) and…perfect omelets!

I was feeling pretty confident.

So, the next morning, I made omelets for my kids.

Let's just say that's not how it looked in the cookbook.....

After several minutes of the floor-rolling-belly-clutching kind of laughter, I scooped the eggs up and they were delicious.  My kids love to know that perfection isn’t the goal – how much easier things are that way! The wonderful thing about cooking? You always have another meal coming up.

Oatmeal

Thursday was a late-start for the elementary schools around here. I woke up to the sound of the microwave going. Oatmeal.

Since they were old enough to eat cereals, oatmeal had been the breakfast of choice for both kids. I got frustrated with the expense and sugar of the instant packets of oatmeal and we devised an “instant” oatmeal mix to keep on hand – quick oats, powdered milk, brown sugar, spices and raisins. They know to cover it with milk and how long to microwave it. It was our first foray into kid-cooking.

I still tend to do a half-awake countdown when I hear the microwave start (has it been more than one minute? Is the oatmeal about to explode?) but I love that they’re learning to feed themselves.

Not yet fully awake Thursday, I remembered the morning my son woke me up announcing he’d made breakfast for everyone. There was a bowl of oatmeal and a plastic spoon at each seat.

“I didn’t know how to make the coffee,” he said seriously.

One of the best breakfasts yet.

To knead or not to knead...

I was flipping through a magazine, waiting for my daughter to finish her gymnastics class, and came across the obligatory “no-knead bread” recipe. The rolls looked good, wrapped around some grated parmesan and herbs, and I’ll probably try them. But for the first time I stopped to wonder – why do we assume kneading is undesirable?

I see the appeal, and I don’t really harbor any delusions about baking the family bread each day, but we tend to take for granted that the thirty-minute-dinner, the one-pot-supper and the no-knead-bread are improvements. Speedy, efficient and fast, the underlying notion is to get the meal on the table and get out of the kitchen.

Realistically, there are a lot of nights when I need to make dinner in a jiffy, like tonight. Between work, homework, sports activities and the various other obligations that come with life, dinner is almost never more than a half-hour production during the week. I rely on the basic combinations of veggies, protein, starch and fruit, and the occasional pizza.

Those short dinners are creative (sometimes!), a chance for everyone to pitch in, and satisfying because we do sit down together. It’s on those same evenings when I might throw together the no-knead bread after the dishes are washed. It’s a chance to settle into cooking without the pressing need to feed everyone. It’s a chance to talk, catch up on our day, and to send everyone off to bed with the feeling (and smell) of coziness.

But I would never give up the kneading of dough. We’ve adapted a few recipes to fit our schedule - the Saturday dinner rolls are a family favorite. We put them together when it suits our schedule - in the morning, middle of the day, or a few hours before dinner. They smell good rising, and kneading them is a delight. I love to smell the dough when we knead it; my daughter is so careful about making the balls just so – she has a tender concentration I adore.

Maybe because we don’t make them every weekend, all the time, we savor them more. And sometimes time is short. That’s when we’ll make no-knead and leave it to rise in the refrigerator overnight. I’ll still keep an eye out for the recipes where kneading is required though, because sometimes that’s what we need.

Knives!

Knives. You just can’t avoid them. In theory, you give a kid a knife and teach her or him how to use it. With a little luck, they learn, they listen and all is good. Of course, getting a mother to buy this is like convincing William Tell’s mother he just needed a little instruction before letting fly with his arrows.

I’ve had to swallow hard and accept that if they’re going to cook, my kids are going to chop. My daughter has her preferred knife, a small, sharp paring knife that’s easy for her to hold. It also fits her cutting board, a little non-slip rubber one her grandmother gave her. It’s a good combination for her. For both kids, I introduced them to cutting by putting them in charge of tofu. It’s an ideal first date with the knife. Easy to manage, simple to cut, no perfection required. From there, we gradually moved onto cheese, mushrooms and zucchini.

My son recently went through a phase of “it’s the eating I like, not the cooking.”

I didn’t fight him on it. But a few weeks later, we were making turkey soup and he was wandering around the kitchen, getting in the way, looking like him might be interested, but not sure how to join in.

I handed him the big knife and the carrots.

Carrots are my personal test-case of parental control. They’re hard. They’re round. The knife could slip. It’s hard for me to watch him chop without reaching in there and taking the knife away.

“I LOVE chopping!” he declared, and he was back in the groove.

Celery, turkey, carrots – they all went into the pot. Chopped.

Given the opportunity, I’ll chop the carrots (or at least get them to have one flat surface) but if a knife is his entry back into the kitchen, so be it.

Awesome Salads!

My son took a bite of Friday’s simple salad (baby spinach and ranch dressing) and declared, “I like *awesome* salads!”

Clearly, his mother’s salad was not awesome.

“What makes a salad awesome?” I asked.

“Lots of stuff!” and he began to list the things that had been in our friend’s salad last weekend. It would have been a shame to let this enthusiasm go to waste...

On Sunday, I stir-fried some chicken in a pan (note to self: get a grill some day) and turned him loose.

The salads were indeed awesome. Chicken, lettuce, shredded carrots, some leftover corn kernels and mozzarella cheese sprinkled on top (a cheese choice my daughter enthusiastically supported).

While we ate, we talked about which foods take the longest to make, but are the shortest to eat and vice versa. Store-bought cookies earned the award for shortest prep – grilled ribs were declared worth the work.

Next time I want them to eat more salad, I’ll have to remember “awesome”.

The List

One of the things I love about Fridays is making the grocery list. During the week, we tend to eat things that are easier to prepare, but the weekend is when we have lots of time to try new dishes. This week, a new issue of Fine Cooking arrived, with a great spread of soup bowls. Each child picked a dish and we’ll try them out this weekend. And we may have to give the brioche a whirl too. I’m looking forward to some new flavor inspirations!

Make a Mess

My daughter received a cupcake book for her birthday last summer. We immediately spent hours poring over the brilliant photographs and imagining all the occasions for which we might need alien cupcakes, or crocodile cupcakes, spider cupcakes or pup-cakes.

Sadly, no holidays were upon us and my first instinct was to return the book to the shelf after we flipped the back cover.

Then I had a moment: “you know, we could just have a cupcake party for no reason at all.” Brilliant. The lovely part of this adventure is that we have a built-in excuse to try everything.

Why not? After all, it’s all about learning to cook.

So they picked a creation (penguins!), we invited a couple of school friends over and everybody set to work crafting penguins with cupcakes, icing and some guidance from the cookbook. At the end of the party, our penguins were more…well…natural looking than those glossy models in the photographs, and they were delicious!

This experience also reminded me that sometimes you just have to be willing to make an excuse, make a mess and do something fun. We still talk about the penguin party, months later, and even if we never make another elaborate cupcake, the book will have been a success. On the other hand, I’ll bet those aliens would be just perfect for that meeting on St. Patrick’s Day!

The Adventure Begins

Some discoveries are made in laboratories. Mine are being made in the kitchen, teaching my children to cook. Nothing fancy, nothing retro. No politics. No faddish diets. Just two kids, a kitchen, and me. This is our adventure.