Yeasty living

We've been loving the nutritional yeast pretty hard around here lately. One of the community living phenomena that I like best is the shared food fad. I used go in for weeks of one ingredient or cooking method all by myself but it is extra fun to do it together. A while back we had a lengthy infatuation with all sorts of pan fried flatbreads - pancakes, corn cakes, dosas, so forth. And there was a brief fling with stinging nettles. Arguably, I still haven't gotten over the banana pancakes, but why would I want to?
Anyway, I made a number of vegans very happy the other day with this off-the-cuff cheese-it imitation:

Nutritional Yeast-its (or Nyits)
1 3/4 cups nutritional yeast
1 cup white flour (sorry celiacs)
2 t. salt
2 t. baking powder
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2- 1 cup water
Mix the dry ingredients. Add the oil and mix thoroughly. Add enough water to make a kneadable dough. Knead it just a little. Divide in two. Roll out as thin as you can on two baking sheets. Cut into squares using butter knife. Bake at 375 for 8-12 minutes, until edges start to brown slightly. Let cool. I challange you to eat them in more than one sitting.

My friend Miriam is vegan and was craving cheese-its for weeks - I think these might have done the job!

Other nutritional yeasty goodness: (the recipies are less developed, sorry)

Nutritional Yeast Gravy
toast 1 cup nutritional yeast in a pan (with 1/4 cup brown rice flour or wheat flour if you want). When it starts to get aromatic, add 1/2 cup olive oil and 1/2 - 1 t. salt and some pepper. Stir continuously until it starts to brown. Add water until it becomes the consistancy you like.

Yeasty Polenta Fries (thanks for Miriam for this one)
Make polenta or any other porridge type mush (I use leftover hot breakfast cereal), mix in as much nutritional yeast as appeals to you along with some oil and a fair bit of salt, I also like to add rosemary. Spread thin on a baking sheet to cool and set. Once set cut into fry shaped pieces and place on well oiled cookie sheet. Brush the tops of the fries with oil too and broil in the oven until golden brown. Flip and broil again.


In other news, we had our first ever kite flying expedition this afternoon and man, was it great! Little Bean totally got into the running and we got some good flights in. Sadly, the occasion was a little going away gathering for our friend Nathaniel who is moving away for grad school in early childhood education. We're going to miss him!

Pancakes and fenceposts

Breakfast was a big hit... and after breakfast - Grandpa and Weewee took care of Little Bean ALL DAY! This is the first day I've had home without him since he was born. And boy, was it great!

It was a beautiful day. Papa Bean and I worked on a fence we're making to separate the back yard from the road. This is a picture of my favorite hand tool - don't know what it is called, but we call it the tree skinner. It is so easy and satisfying to use. Here I'm skinning a small black locust tree that was cleared to make way for a bike path extension near our house - and now will have a continued life as a fencepost in our yard. Perhaps not a glorious as existence, but better than wood chips I figure.

P.B. fixing our ax

With a skinned fencepost

We got all the posts into the ground, ate yummy lunch, trellised the peas, prepared the squash bed in the garden, watered, and even hung out a little bit. Amazing.

Banana Pancakes
1 banana, mashed
3/4 cup masa (corn) flour
1/4 cup teff flour (you can substitute buckwheat but add a little liquid)
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
cinnamon
1/2 t. vanilla
2 T. oil
1 1/4 - 1 1/2 cups milk (I use whole)
Mash the banana and masa flour together well. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and stir. Add the wet and mix, add milk until it is a thick batter.
Fry in butter until golden brown on each side.

Rhubarb sauce
Double handful rhubarb
3 apples
1 banana
Chop everything and simmer until fully melded - around an hour.

The first post

... is all about breakfast tomorrow morning. Grandpa and Weewee are coming for breakfast and I'm going to feed them banana pancakes with rhubarb sauce, sour cream and maple syrup. I'm excited. When I get around to measuring things, I'll post the gluten-, soy-, egg-, and sugar-free pancake recipe.
Yum.