Tuesday's Twist: Popcorn Cornbread

Tuesday's Twist:  A basic recipe with a fun twist.  In other words, just another excuse for me to play around with weird recipes I've been dying to try.

This is a good example of what I was talking about yesterday.  Making cornbread once is realistic, but to make it twice in one day just for the purposes of the blog is unrealistic.  Unless you all want to show up at my door and help me eat both pans?  Hmm, that's what I thought.  

Rather than make a second pan I'll use this as an opportunity to share a little bit about my recipe development process.  Let's see, what's the best way to do this? How about bullet points:

- First an idea pops into my head- "hey, you should make bread with ground up popcorn in place of some of the flour...okay... hmmm... how about cornbread so it's a popcorn cornbread with double or triple corn? ....yes, let's go with that for now."

- Once I settle on a basic idea I compare multiple recipes for the base (unless I already have a tried and true base).  In this case I looked at various cornbread recipes, took bits and pieces of what I liked from each one, then wrote out a final recipe in my notebook.  I write everything out in a notebook to keep track of what works and what doesn't.  It's filled with notes and scribbles of chicken scratch (or rather, kitchen scratch) on ideas, improvements and results.

Random Recipe Wednesday: Banana-Raisin Brown Bread

Once again I fell for a deal.  I really need to stop checking the kitchen section of the thrift store every time I get groceries.  But they're right next to each other and you just never know what someone might get rid of.  I've always got my eye out for All-Clad pans, vintage Pyrex bowls, cute props and cookbooks.  Thankfully I don't find what I'm looking for most of the time.  This time, however, I couldn't pass up these shimmering measuring spoons and a miniature ceramic loaf pan.  I literally stood there for 5 minutes trying to decide if I was really going to buy them.  Then I walked around another 10 minutes hoping to change my mind.  As you can see that strategy didn't work.

Weird Recipe Wednesday: Sweet Potato Polenta with Cinnamon and Smoked Paprika

Weird Recipe Wednesday: Because some recipes are so weird I just HAVE to try them.  My curiosity always gets the better of me.

I'll risk sounding like a broken record here and remind you how much I like to combine little bits and pieces of random recipes.  Stick with me though, you just might learn something in the process, like how my mind wanders from grits to potatoes to soup to cookies and back...with a sprinkle of cinnamon and smoked paprika.

I've eaten grits once, maybe twice, but we're not too familiar with them this far north.  After spotting Jenna's recipe for Sweet Potato Grits I figured it was time to give grits another whirl.  I didn't do my homework and used the cornmeal in the cupboard as opposed to grits.  Grits are made from hominy, which is corn soaked in lye.  If hominy isn't involved you just have cornmeal, which makes polenta.  Now I know for next time.

Fermented Friday: Leftover Oatmeal Turned Bread- Cranberry-Sage or Multigrain

Fermented Friday: recipes featuring yeast, wine, beer or some form of fermentation.

Guess what happens when make a batch of rather bland slow cooker steel-cut oats one day, and then make Chocolate-Pumpkin Quinoa the next day?  That's right, leftover oatmeal.  I'm not one to let leftovers stand in the fridge, they always turn into something else.  It would be pretty fun to make cookies or granola bars with cooked oats, but we need a little yeast action for Fermented Friday.  If we can make bread with rice why not bread with leftover oatmeal?

Tuesday's Twist: Creamy Polenta (without the cream)

Tuesday's Twist:  A basic recipe with a fun twist.  In other words, just another excuse for me to play around with weird recipes I've been dying to try.

I warned you I've been on a cornmeal kick.  I also mentioned that tofu might reappear when I make something a little more, shall we say, repeatable.  Last week I told you about my friend, Emma, and her soy internship.  In addition to using TVP, she also developed recipes using silken tofu.  One of those recipes was Creamy Polenta with Apples and Swiss Chard.  I will definitely be making it in the near future, but for this week I took her polenta base and added something a little different. 

Edit: Does anyone have any idea WHY the above paragraph is in white???? Everything else came out normal and I did  nothing (that I know of) differently to that paragraph. Maybe it has to do with all the links? Please let me know if you know how to fix it.  I've also noticed a lot of spacing issues that aren't posting they same way I type them... But, back to the polenta...

Tuesday's Twist: Peanut Butter Cornmeal/Quinoa Cookies

Tuesday's Twist:  A basic recipe with a fun twist.  In other words, just another excuse for me to play around with weird recipes I've been dying to try.

Your basic three ingredient peanut butter cookie is edible, but it can definitely be bumped up a notch or two.  I've seen a few concepts floating around the internet that I wanted to try, so I split the dough in half and tried two new twists.  To one half I added cornmeal, and to the other half I added toasted, ground quinoa.