Citrusy Bran - Kiwi Muffins

March and April are those awkward months of what I like to call "teenage weather". You know, days that can go from being sunny and burgeoning on warm for the morning drive into work, setting you up to believe it'll be even nicer by the time you clock out, only to turn sullen and brooding around 1PM, blowing brisk wind that smells faintly of December and makes you wish you had brought that winter jacket with you.

Like I said - "teenage weather".

But, like those moody, broody teenage years, these months are a bridge period between seasons, a mixture of frigid winter and fresh spring. And these months will pass just as quickly as those youthful "good old days".

For today, though, why not embrace both the bright promise of springtime and the hearty comfort of winter? A classic omelette with gooey cheese and bright, crisp asparagus with a fresh spinach and roast beet salad for lunch, perhaps? Or a thick, hearty bowl of chana masala with barely steamed broccoli and cauliflower and a scoop of fragrant jasmine rice for a meatless dinner?

I combine the best of cold and less-cold (!) food cravings in these muffins too - hearty bran, wheat germ, multigrain cereal and spices on one hand, with home-dried kiwi slices, fresh ginger, two types of citrus and the tang of buttermilk and sour cream on the other. Rich, stick to your ribs, but the perfect gateway food for spring!

 

What's your favourite "in between seasons" food?

 

Things Learned by Drying Fruit

Take it slow.

It helps to have support.

A little elbow grease never hurt anyone.

It is possible to work together.

You might feel like you're falling through the cracks...

...but something will always catch you.

Some things just weren't meant to be. Persevere and you will be rewarded.

Things will get messy sometimes...

But in the end, you're responsible for your own messes.

Mostly Mom's Banana Bread

Darn.

I missed National Banana Bread Day.

Wait, there was even a National Banana Bread Day in the first place?? Yeah, news to me too. But according to the news mogul that is CNN, it blew past us on the 23rd of February. I actually just realized (like 5 minutes ago realized) that I have yet to flip the months on any of my 3 bedroom calendars. C'est la vie. Like so many other things these days, it will get done later. Just like going through bananas at our house - they seem these days to always be the fruit we "promise to eat tomorrow".

The bonus of that procrastination / busy life is that come the weekend, it's banana bread time! And this one is really not special - one of the gazillions I now have posted on this blog and quintillions I've made over the years. The difference for me, when I made it, is that the recipe this time didn't come from a website or a blog or a cookbook - it came from my mom's recipe box.

Granted, the recipe itself was sourced from the late 70's copy of The Joy of Cooking, but my mom re-wrote it years ago and added it to her files. Then, when I was searching for "the perfect banana bread", I found it and slightly updated it to not only use what I had on hand (yogurt for sour cream, 5 bananas instead of 4) but make it slightly healthier by reducing the eggs and mostly richer with dark chocolate chips and chopped walnuts. The recipe itself was perfect as is - dense, sweet and an undeniably homey excuse to eat cake for breakfast, snacks and dessert (hey, it had fruit!), but now it's even better. More moist, just as dense, without a real "heaviness" or "oily dampness", and the bites of nuts and embedded treats of chocolate made it that much more of a "moreish" coffee break snack.

So thanks, mom and the Joy of Cooking, for one super-duper loaf!

The Haunted House Soup

There are some meals you just never forget. Your first taste of fresh-from-the-ocean lobster, steamed in a dockside fish shack; your mom's tried and true spaghetti and meatballs; your first taste of sushi and even the dorm-room desperation creations you made with your roommates in college (I admit to having sandwich maker-ized, chili powdered tuna and ketchup sandwiches for lunch regularly in my first and second years). All of these things lodge permanently into your memory, for better or worse, and even though you might later have lobster thermidor at a fancy-pants Michelin star establishment, or artisan spaghetti con polpette in Italy, it is never quite the same as that ingrained taste sensation.

While there are many, many baked goods of my mom's that I can distinctly remember the flavour of and yet can never seem to recreate, the the first meal that pops into my mind as being special is my 18th birthday dinner that my mom, then-boyfriend and I shared on a weekend trip to Montreal. I had asked to go into Quebec for the occasion for a very "student-ine" reason: the drinking age was only eighteen there, unlike Ontario where it was a year older. My mom agreed readily, which may surprise you - but consider that my parents had introduced me to coffee and alcohol at a young age (thus taking the urge to binge on them as "forbidden" later like a few of my schoolmates) and neither of us had been to Montreal in several years. When it came time to pick my "birthday restaurant", it only took a few minutes of browsing RestoMontreal before I knew exactly where I was headed: a funky, out-of-the-way "dinner theatre" like place called La Maison Hantée.

The premise there was simple - each table weaves their way into the dining room led by their waiter, who then becomes part of the "story" in between serving courses and clearing plates. Meanwhile, the diners are entertained by a cast of characters wrapped up in a shortened play, occasionally being brought into the plot themselves. The twist at Maison was (and if you know French you already know) that the whole restaurant is in fact one giant haunted house. An artfully done haunted house, mind you, without chainsaw wielding maniacs and giant tarantulas, but still, a haunted house. The waiters? A cast of reanimated corpses and ghostly figures, all killed off in one shockingly horrific way or another. The way into the dining room? A pitch-black, twisted, uneven-floored maze, wide enough for only a single person and navigable only by clinging to the diner in front of you. And the story? Reminiscent of Thir13en Ghosts, including vengeful spirits, suicidal brides and a wrongful death. The whole thing was gory and frightening without being extraneous in any way, with bits of humour, romance and heartbreak thrown in in a very elegant and - well, French - way.

 

The menu? On the surface, unremarkable - Lebanese bruschetta-like flatbreads, soup, chicken breast with ham and Swiss, baked baby potatoes and vegetables and chocolate cake for dessert. But the food! Delicious to a fault, in particular the soup. And that soup became something I tried for years to recreate, especially after the Maison suffered major flood damage that made the building unstable and forced it to be demolished. The lot became a condo building (evoking a sort of Joni Mitchell vibe) and the restaurant faded into oblivion. But not that soup. Described as a "lentil and vegetable potage", it sounded simple enough, right? In reality, it really was. Lentils and vegetables, a few herbs, some broth... but the ratios and specifics of it all, and the texture of it - thick, almost baby-food thick, and stick-to-your-ribs for hours without weighing you down - made it unique. The secret, I discovered, was the slow cooking of lots of onion, adding a wealth of carrots, a few cauliflower stems (for the "creaminess") and pureeing everything twice. It's not 100% identical to the Haunted House, but it's close enough that I can close my eyes and flash back to those good ol' days.

Three Beans Make Good Butter!

It should come as no surprise that, as a nutritionist, I have an innate fondness for the world of the complex carb - slash - protein package that is the humble legume. Usually, when you think "bean", images of either long, slender haricots verts with a pat of butter or the pintos, blacks and kidneys you find in chili or Mexican take out. But the whole legume spectrum encompasses more than these - including butter, navy, fava, Great Northern, mung, soy and a host of other (and sometimes super-colourful heirloom) "dry beans" as well as black- and yellow-eyed peas, chickpeas (also called garbanzo beans), peas, lentils and peanuts.

A lot of people are surprised to see peanuts in the list of bean-related foods, but they belong to the Leguminosae (or Fabaceae, depending on who you reference) family of plants. Being an edible "seed" in a pod, all legumes are the best source of concentrated protein in the plant world - and peanuts are no exception. For the same amount of calories, legumes provide 2-to-4 times the protein of whole grains.  In fact, charities like UNICEF, Project Peanut Butter and Doctors Without Borders use them to help alleviate malnutrition in third-world countries! It's a world away from the standard lunchtime PB&J, for sure.

For most of us, though, peanuts are normally found in the "nut" category - especially as a "butter". Their naturally higher fat content makes them a natural for the application, making a luscious cream almost on their own with the application of a grinder. Like I showed you with the soynut butter, though, you can make a rich, roasted "spread" from any nut or legume - or combinations of the two. The idea of combining legumes into a spreadable snack was where I started playing around with the soynut butter recipe, adding first roasted kidney beans for a "2-Bean Butter" and finally deciding to use some raw peanuts in concocting a "Triple Legume Butter".  In the end, this unique and delicious spin on the traditional was a great team of peanuts, soybeans and kidney beans - and it has about the same calories and fat of the jarred, storebought kind. Plus, it's relatively cheap if you make your own roasted beans (and even cheaper if you shell your own peanuts - I used raw ones from the bag we usually feed to the squirrels). I didn't add either salt or sugar to the original puree, so that when I use it for baking I can customize those levels to taste. Although, if you're feeling really decadent, you could use melted butter for the oil and turn it into a "true" butter!