Sunday, February 8, 2009

Whole Grain Carb Delights

Here is a taste of some of the carb-rich foods we have eaten and baked throughout the week. Of course, they all are whole grain, healthy, and delicious!

Most of the time for breakfast we enjoy a hearty bowl of cereal and mix in a bunch of nutritious goodies, including dried or fresh fruit, hemp or flaxmeal, and wheat germ or oat bran. When we're not eating cold cereal, we like to soak some rolled flakes (oats, barley flakes, spelt flakes, triticale flakes, etc.) in mylk and enjoy cold, or have a bowl of warm porridge (with flakes or grits/meals such as pumpernickle meal, kamut grits, etc.). We love texture, chewiness, nuttiness, and all things nutritious/whole grain!

Our favorite cold cereals include: Nature's Path Cereals (Millet Rice, Mesa Sunrise, or Gluten Free Whole-O's), and Arrowhead Mills Shredded Wheat. We periodically like Barbara's Bakery Shredded Oats and Puffins. A new cereal we also really liked is Enjoy Life's Cinnamon Crunch Granola (p.s. this is so crunchy, it needs to be soaked in mylk before eating).

This week we decided to do something different for breakfast. We warmed up cereal (in this case it was Peace's Cinnamon Spice Crunch) in the microwave and enjoyed it warm, like la belle vegan does periodically. It was very good - the spiced flavors came out into the milk and the texture was a nice softer bite.












Every week we make homemade bread/rolls and muffins. This week we savored homemade garlic breadsticks dipped in high quality Italian olive oil. Buttery rich, garlicy goodness! We enjoyed them with some steamed kale (with garlic, too), and a bowl of soup with lentils.

Now, for dessert, we love experimenting. We had anise powder hidden in our pantry for quite some time and finally put it to use - with fig anise oatmeal cookies. The idea was cool, and we love licorice flavor, which is similar to anise, but the flavor wasn't right. The anise didn't taste licoricy, and in a cookie, it was odd. The texture of the cookies turned out nice, we just need to tweak the cookie flavor and make authentic oatmeal spice cookies, or other flavors such as maple date oatmeal.

Another flavor we made in the kitchen along with the fig anise was fig orange. Sadly, the orange flavor wasn't strong enough, because we just used o.j. instead of orange peel. We spread on some coconut frosting, which made it a rich cookie!


We are baker fanatics, so had to make another special sweet - this time it came out perfect. Lemon Poppyseed Whole Grain cake from Bob's Red Mill, with added banana, flax, and fresh pineapple. Tropical, sweet, and so deliciously moist!What is funny is that as I am writing this post about baked goods/carbs, I have been eating all raw today, so these foods look very tempting! We are planning to make Sundays >90% raw days - with dried fruits, fresh fruits, smoothies, veggies, seeds, and raw meals. (That means no carbs except raw soaked grains and wheat germ.)

Cravings for carbs galore!
-LK

2 comments:

The Voracious Vegan said...

Gorgeous food, gorgeous pics! Love your blog.

Unknown said...

Wow, you've been busy in the kitchen!! The photos look great. Your blog is FULL of information...thanks for sharing! I'll be popping back for sure :0)