Birthday and Bread Making

[lydamorehouse]

 
Image: bread made from steel cut oats (leftovers).

Yesterday was Mason's TWENTY-FIRST birthday. For some reason, despite the fact that he's been an official adult for some time now, 21 feels... old. Like, I have a grown-up child all of a sudden. It feels very weird.

At any rate, we had a lovely day. Shawn took the day off and I cancelled all my usual plans.

However, we didn't have a huge agenda. In fact, one of the gifts Mason wanted to give himself was a long, solitary walk--for three hours. One of the things Shawn and I have been doing when we have spare time is to go through the zillion and a half cookbooks we've collected over the years. In one of them--a vegetarian cookbook from 1978--was a very gnarly recipe for bread using leftover steel cut oats (though I think their recipe might have called for oat groats.. I know for sure that it absolutely wanted wheat germ.) At any rate, I thought to myself, "Huh, I have some leftover steel cut oats in the fridge. I wonder if there is a modern recipe out there for bread that could use those up?" SURE ENOUGH. I found one immediately. 

Unfortunately, this recipe made THREE LOAVES of bread. I... do not know what we're going to do with so much oatmeal bread??? It's tasty, but very.... let's just say it still vibes very 1978. It is... CRUNCHY in a granola-head way. My family is very uncertain about the steel cut oats because my family mistrusts any food over three days old. Mason generally laughed to see me making this stuff and rolled his eyes because he has noticed that I've been gravitating towards these kinds of cookbooks lately. I've been threatening "something with tempeh" for dinner for several days now. This is an empty threat... mostly (though I did buy some when I saw it was still in the stores.)

Is it nostalgia? Maybe? Although my mother never cooked like this. I didn't even really hang around people who did, either. I think it's some version of FOMO nostalgia. Like, I always thought the hippie granola-heads were COOL in the 1978s, so now I am attempting to be one. Which is so me... because now is not the right time as finding bulgur wheat is damned near impossible these days. I know because I looked for it a couple of years ago and EVENTUALLY found somewhere unexpected (I had STARTED at the coops, and maybe found it at Target??) Anyway, the point is, I not sure anyone even really liked this food when it was popular. I am probably chasing some FOMO nostalgia I won't even be happy to have recreated. :-)

And now I have three loaves of it. As it were.

Comments

[lcohen]

the bread you made is probably very tasty, but i have to tell you--pot lucks back in the day were a sore trial because you never encountered so much stuff you had zero interest in eating and actually trying it, to avoid starving to death, bore up your initial impression.

[lcohen]

oh, and happy birthday to mason!

[lydamorehouse]

I will pass on the salutations to Mason, and, yes, I have some probably-similar-to-yours experiences with lesbian potlucks wherein I would stare forlornly at a tofu pup and too many bean salads and think, "Whelp, I'm doing this for COMMUNITY not for the food."

[carbonel]

I'm actually very fond of crunchy-granola bread. I prefer bread that has serious "tooth" to it. But if you want to space it out with other bread, I bet it will freeze very well.

[lydamorehouse]

I was able to give away a loaf this afternoon, but otherwise I might have ding-dong dashed you a loaf! I will keep you in mind should I be overcome by more toothsome breads!! :-)

[minnehaha]

This FOMO nostalgia conundrum can be resolved by picking up the Moosewood Cookbook and making, oh, pretty much anything in it. The brownies can be counted on to be a particularly horrible disappointment, but all of it is much more WTF than you want.

Your bread looks spectacularly delicious.

K.

[lydamorehouse]

Hahaha. You're probably VERY right.

[pameladean]

I am old and therefore also am much more impressed by 21 than by 18. Happy birthday to Mason!

Most bread freezes well.

I have several fairly good tempeh recipes, but no idea how they would sit with your family.

I don't find many tempeh recipes palatable because it's kind of the opposite of tofu. It has a distinctive flavor that can't just be disregarded, but has to be worked with. I've had some luck with Indonesian recipes, since that's where it's from; but there aren't a lot of them that don't require ingredients I don't have.

P.

[lydamorehouse]

"opposite of tofu" seems very correct. There is a TASTE for sure. I will have to hunt around to see what I can do with it. I suspect it will wait until Mason is back at school and I can just try eating 1978-style without JUDGEMENT. :-)

[pameladean]

Yes, the absence of judgement is much to be preferred in these tricky situations.

I think most of my retro vegetarian cooking is from the eighties or later.

[sabotabby]

So much bread! It looks delicious though. And happy birthday to Mason.