Amanda Miller
Columnist
Lettuce Eat Local

“I’m so blue-hoo-hoo, blue-hoo-hoo, blue-hoo-hoo-hooooo, I’m so blue I don’t know what to do!” If you are in the right demographic, you might know exactly how to sing those silly lines — proper French accent and falsetto included. It’s Madame Blueberry singing her operatic lament, of course, from a turn-of-the-century eponymous episode of VeggieTales. 

I haven’t seen that animated show of my childhood in probably 20 years, but the tune immediately pops right back into my head. [Side note, I always wondered if the greedy berry was based off of something, but never bothered to look it up until right now: Madame Bovary from a realist 1857 novel of the same name. Something new to add to my neverending reading list.] It’s a song my nine-month-old daughter could sing often these days; fortunately not in the emotional sense, although her teeth and allergies have been really bothering her this week. 

I actually mean in the physical sense — and clearly, she’s not cold in this weather. Just blue, so blue, thanks to her obsession with blueberries. 

She does well eating almost all foods so far, but a lot of B foods are at the top of her preferred list. Bananas, beef, beets, and most of all, blueberries. (Although she is not undiscerningly affirmative of foods that start with b, as the butternut squash and frozen cubes of bone broth I tried to feed her this morning did not go over as well.) I’m not quite sure how far babies are supposed to be able to see at this developmental stage, but I’m guessing I could find out some with accuracy if I just set a bowl of blueberries down at various distances from Kiah. 

I decided to be so smart the other day, and instead of cutting so many blueberries in half — okay, let’s be honest, I just eat half of each berry and give her the rest, she didn’t get her love of fruit out of nowhere — I figured I would just cook some berries down into a simple sauce to stir into yogurt. 

I did achieve my goal of not having to chase down and clean up all the dropped, thrown, and smacked berry halves. But I forgot how cooked blueberries take on an almost incandescent shade of deep dazzling blue that permeates and stains anything it touches. 

And, incidentally, it touches a lot of things when there’s a baby involved. 

Oh well, I had to do laundry anyway. And that vibrant blue color is not only an indication of rich blueberry flavor, but also of the presence of anthocyanins, powerful antioxidants found primarily in blue, purple, black, and red foods. Berries have the highest concentrations of anthocyanins, which may have significant health benefits, including reducing heart disease, lowering blood pressure, and improving brain function. All sorts of things that I as her mother care deeply about Kiah getting as she grows, and all sorts of things that she couldn’t care less about, as long as whatever she’s eating tastes like blueberries. 

So I’ll keep giving her blueberries in whatever format, and she’ll keep eating them, and the floor and our clothes will keep singing, “I’m so blue….”

Magical Blueberry Brownies 

I was going to share a recipe for some iteration of vibrantly colored blueberry-beet yogurt parfait, but then I remembered the brownies a friend had made and their secret ingredient — blueberries! While I didn’t actually follow the recipe, I kept the surprisingly strong ratio of blueberries to cocoa powder the same, as they are the backbone of the brownies. All the anthocyanins are still present even though the blue color disappears, but don’t worry, a rich staining brown takes its place.

Prep tips: you can use fresh or thawed frozen blueberries. Also these are clearly not normal brownies so don’t expect that; just expect tasty.

1 ½ cups blueberries

1 ¼ cups cocoa powder

½ cup almond butter

sugar or maple syrup to taste 

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

2 eggs

Process all ingredients in a blender until smooth. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake at 325° for about 30 minutes, or until brownies have formed a crust on top and are firmed. Let cool in the pan for at least a little while before digging into — they will be crumbly, but oh so chocolatey. Store leftovers in the fridge. 

Amanda Miller
Columnist
Lettuce Eat Local

“Good stuff, Maynard!”

Some of you might get that reference immediately, while the rest of you have no idea what I’m doing. Our household is young enough that we wouldn’t quite as naturally spout off that tagline from a 1983 Malt-O-Meal commercial, yet you’ll hear it rolling off Brian’s and my tongues like cream of wheat off a spoon. Benson has even been heard saying it to himself in his silly little voice. Although I’m not sure of the conversation context, I first learned about this Maynard from a group of ladies in one of my cooking classes; their age demographic is above mine by a good margin, so they were all in the know while I had to be educated. 

Since then, I’ve educated several others with an easy-to-reference YouTube clip of the breakfast bear. It gets me every time — I don’t know if it’s the haircuts, the speaking patterns, or the dry humor, but I know it’s not the product advertised.

I know lots of people are fans of Malt-O-Meal. Or rather, I assume there are at least enough people that purchase this kind of product to keep it on the market since its invention in 1919. Cooked milled wheat middlings had been served as a breakfast porridge for at least a couple decades before then; Cream of Wheat debuted in Chicago at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Cream of Wheat was a marketing innovation in response to a reduced demand for flour, and it was clearly met with more accolade than I give it: the initial product testers telegrammed back, “Forget the flour. Send us a car of Cream of Wheat.”

Before this article, I thought those two products were the same thing under different brand names, but Malt-O-Meal added malted barley to a slightly coarser ground wheat than the smoother, “creamier”-cooking Cream of Wheat. Farina is the general term for this particular style of ground wheat kernels, that falls somewhere on the spectrum between cracked wheat berries and flour; think grits made from wheat instead of corn. 

I’m obviously not a major connoisseur of the porridge. I’ve had one or the other before, but I’m generationally biased against it; my parents tell of their season as recently-married poor young college students when Cream of Wheat was their breakfast staple for far too many mornings. My mom got desperate enough for some variety in their budget breakfast that she tried adding food coloring — it seems it didn’t help matters much. 

On the other hand, my mother-in-law has instant Cream of Wheat for breakfast often, as a perfect easy breakfast after finishing the early morning milking. (She makes it with milk, of course, and tops it with a little brown sugar.)

All I can say for farina porridge is that it’s a good blank canvas for adding flavors, whether the pre-added packaged varieties or your own in-home additions. But God made oatmeal for a reason, so if I want a hot breakfast porridge, and one that has better taste, texture, and nutrition, oatmeal is where I’m headed. 

All that said, we did just have wheat harvest. And if there ever was a time to try making my own cream of wheat, it’s when I have a bucket of fresh-from-our-field wheat berries sitting in my kitchen…i.e., now. 

And you know, it wasn’t bad. It’s not going to become a staple, but I surprised myself with how enthusiastically I kept going in for another bite. I can truthfully say, “Good stuff, Maynard.”

Homemade Malt of Wheat

I wanted the creaminess of Cream of Wheat and the malt of Malt-O-Meal, so good news, I can do both. This breakfast isn’t quite as quick as the minute or two in the microwave the instant varieties require, yet it’s still fast and easy, and a good bit more nutritious since this uses the whole wheat berry instead of degermed. My Vitamix high-powered blender can do a whole range of different grind textures, and you should be able to find something that gets a coarse grind for you (try a food processor or coffee grinder if you don’t have a blender). 

Prep tips: if a bucket of fresh wheat didn’t appear in your house, you can find wheat berries at Glenn’s Bulk Food, another bulk food store, or sometimes even a “regular” grocery.

½ cup wheat kernels, ground to a medium-fine texture

2 cups milk 

¼ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons browned butter 

2 tablespoons malted milk powder

sweetener and/or toppings of choice

Add wheat, milk, and salt to a saucepan, and simmer over medium-high heat until thickened, 5-10 minutes depending on the grind. Remove from heat and whisk in butter and malted milk, as well as honey/maple syrup/brown sugar/whatever you want. Top with toasted nuts, chocolate chips, coconut, bananas, again whatever you want — or really just another pat of butter. 

Amanda Miller
Columnist
Lettuce Eat Local

The silence in my house right now is deafening — which is a very odd thing to say when there are four children three years old and younger in my care.  

This morning we got eight-month-old twins for foster respite care for five days; they’re just a couple weeks older than Kiah, so it’s like we have triplets! The time leading up to and getting into naptime was, shall we say, not so quiet, but by some strange yet beautiful miracle, all three babies eventually fell asleep. Not only are they all still sleeping at the same time, but Brian also came in to grab a late lunch and took Benson out to the shop with him. 

I got the dishwasher started and picked up a bit, then started to feel a little disoriented about what to do next. I’m clearly not going to do anything that makes any noise at the risk of upsetting our fragile ecosystem, and I completely expect any or all of them to get up at any second. And yet, here I am. 

I feel a little frantic to type as quickly as possible to best utilize this somewhat unfathomable lapse in clambering babies, although that pressure made me sit and stare in writer’s paralysis for a few minutes. I can hear Baby Girl occasionally stirring on the monitor, and Baby Boy’s lullabies playing in his room. Kiah hasn’t made a peep yet. 

I’ve always wanted twins, but triplets feels like a bit much. I am clearly outnumbered everywhere I look — and the number of diapers I’ll change in the next few days won’t change that feeling. Until this magical naptime, I had on average one baby crying at any given time; I won’t count on this silence happening every day, but my goodness it’s a nice way to start it off. 

I did try to head into this as prepared as I could be. Friends are scheduled to come by every day to help hold babies, something I confirmed before I said yes to the twins. The babies obviously didn’t need a lot of food prep, but since I just don’t know at all what to expect, there are some easy-to-grab components stashed in the fridge for the rest of us. I want my friends and their kids to have plenty to eat and snack on while they’re here helping of course, but when I started thinking about what to have on hand I realized it’s not quite so simple as sandwiches or pizza. 

Apparently I jive with people with food allergies: between everyone (including myself) it needs to be without gluten, dairy, garlic, honey, peanuts, potatoes, and pork. And that doesn’t include the family that has to follow an autoimmune protocol diet, which has too many restrictions to list. Hence the “components” — everyone can find something and make their own combination as needed. Rice, beans, browned hamburger, roasted cauliflower and sweet potatoes, salad fixings, watermelon, a dozen random leftovers, etc. (And yes, chocolate stashed all over the house and an extra batch of my pudding in the fridge.) 

Snacks are just as important for keeping up your baby-watching stamina, and cookies seemed like the right kind of thing to leave sitting out all day to nibble on. I make all sorts of “weird” varieties of cookies (the peanut butter chickpea ones I made recently were delish), but not often with this certain subset of ingredients, and it’s fun to try something new — like having triplets for a few days.

And like having triplets, I might not do ready-for-anything meal planning like this all the time, but every once in a while, it’s really kind of fun. Especially when it comes with days of babies.    

Cinna-nana Cookies

I’m going to be honest, these cookies did not overwhelm me with their deliciousness…yet I kept coming back for another, as there’s something more-ish about them. I could work on tweaking them more, but for now, they’re good enough, and they worked for all our many needs as well as being good for the “triplets” too, so I call that a win. Benson and I whipped them out in mere minutes, so whether you have three babies or not, it’s hard to complain about almost-instant cookies.

Prep tips: add some maple syrup if you need these cookies to be sweeter or are skipping the chocolate (which you should only do if your diet requires it; always say yes to chocolate). 

2 very ripe bananas

2 eggs

¼ cup coconut oil, melted

½ cup coconut flour

2 teaspoons cinnamon

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

optional: chocolate of choice, melted

Mash the bananas, then whisk in eggs and oil. Mix in remaining ingredients. Scoop out desired amount and form into a ball, pressing with a fork once on a baking sheet; repeat with remaining dough. Bake at 350° for about 15 minutes, until golden on the edges. Let cool fully, then drizzle with melted chocolate.