5.10.06 Midweek Munchies and Raw Bars

<--- The Bakehouse tour is up on my side bar!
I am preparing my next buying club order due today, but it won't be delivered for two weeks as it goes on a four week cycle. I've been busy filling that bakehouse order I mentioned last week so I haven't had much time to think ahead for family meal planning yet. And of important meal planning note this Saturday we are having guests who have traveled to Europe over to help my homeschoolers gain an understanding of Europe. We will be having a traditional European meal (with a little renaissance flair for history purposes). I am planning on savory "meat" pies (vegan of course), root vegetable & cabbage soup, some sort of oatmeal scone with a rhubarb sauce.... I'll blog it, but it may take me a few days. Here's a list of how food was used in our family recently...

• Last week fast meals centered around a seitan roast in which I cut off portions for a variety of fast meals. I cooked the seitan roast in the crockpot as I have done previously, but this time I left the remaining cooking broth in the slow cooker, added a little water (just enough so that the cooking loquid is still flavorful) and cooked potatoes cut into long 1/8 slivers, extra onions and baby carrots to have with the seitan for supper. I'll post more this week about the variety of meals I made with the roast (I have pictures).
• I discovered the joy of red split lentils and a wonderful soup I made from it (more on this later also), I also checked out Isil's from Turkey's site and found a "real" middle eastern red split lentil recipe using traditional cultural ingredients.
• Since I still have a few packages of green beans from last year in the freezer these were good for a couple fast stir fries. One I especially liked included cooked chickpeas, mushrooms, red and yellow peppers with a sprinkle of ozark seasoning from Penzey's and soy sauce.
• I made a batch (6 loaves) of dense and nutritious whole grain flax and soy bread for the family to munch on for the week in my BOSCH Universal and grain mill. There are times I like a good dense loaf and times I like a lighter one, I make bread both ways depending on the occassion. This bread happened to include soy flour and okara (leftover from making soymilk).

PREVIEW of what I'm doing this week.....
This is a large 1 1/2 gallon Tupperware Thats-A-Bowl full of what I call a really raw bar (aka: better than fudge). This is for that order I talked about last week. There is enough here for 134 / 2-2.5 oz portions (we get 14 of them to eat) here, but I mixed it up in double recipe batches otherwise it would be impossibleto deal with. I have a digital scale and measure them to be exactly 2 oz for the coffee house I sell in, but for this order I decided to mash them into a 1/4 measuring cup which is about perfect in weight also. This recipe was originally made in 2002 for one of my customers who ate a raw only diet to take with him while biking. He shared them with his friends and they loved them. Organic Raw Bars have been rather popular for my bakehouse work ever since.

Here's my recipe (it does include honey, but you can change this to whatever liquid sweetener you prefer). My honey comes from a small local harvester and fellow organic veggie and fruit grower. This recipe makes 16 - 2 oz portions with a little leftover for immediate eating.

DORI'S REALLY RAW BAR RECIPE
2 Cups Organic Rolled Oats
1 C shredded unsweetened coconut
1/2 C ground flax seed (brown or gold)
1/2 C dried currants
1/2 C raw sunflower seeds
1/2 C carob powder
1/3 C natural nut butter
1 C really raw honey preferably raised by a local organic farmer
Mix all together really well. Portion into small servings. 2 oz is to much for me at one time, but seems to make my son and DH happy, it is also a good size to sell at the coffee house.

Want to know more about Midweek Munchies, check out Harmonia's Hut.