Breakfast

Bleenies were one of the first "indigenous" foods I learned to make on my year on a student exchange in Soviet Ukraine. I wish for the life of me I could recall exactly how we used to make them, but I do recall it was really easy, and not really a recipe per-se but just tossing a few things together. It almost always involved some sort of soured milk product - either something like kefir that had been intentionally soured, or milk that had gone off, which happened a lot with their shoddy milk supply chain.

This recipe is one I got from a Romanian woman who served them at a BBQ she hosted last summer. It is easy to throw together, and pretty flexible too. In fact, the "recipe" she gave me did not really list the amounts of anything except the 1 litre of milk! So I've put some solid numbers on those ingredients in the many times I've made this since then.

• 1 litre milk
• 70 to 100g sugar
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 to 2 and 2/3 cups flour (see below)

Here are a couple of videos on making your own bacon. We now have to let it sit in the fridge for a week so we'll follow up next weekend with another series of videos on what to do next. If you have a smoker of any sort, then making your own bacon is pretty easy. In fact, even if you do not you should be able to finish it up in your oven for unsmoked bacon - I'll try that once and make a video for it as well. This is the first time I'm making my bacon this way - usually I brine the belly for 2 or 3 days in my regular brining solution, and then smoke it. But I decided to give curing a try since I think it is a more correct way to do it, and I also decided to try using nitrites even though I am pretty sure you can cure without them. Nitrites work their way into the meat and then turn to a gas, and as the gas escapes it is noxious to microorganisms which kills them and gives you a higher degree of certainty that the meat is safe. I've never worried too much about that since bacon always gets cooked well anyway. I'll also try this again with just a salt cure and no nitrites.

The exact recipe I'm using is from monty on Ottawa Foodies. It looks like this for 5 lbs of belly.

• 1/4 cup non-iodized salt (pickling, kosher, sea)
• 2 tsp Insta-Cure® (6.25% sodium nitrite)
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup maple syrup

I wanted to make Granola, but as I usually do with something new, I don't like to just get a recipe and try it out, I like to read a bunch of recipes to come to understand the basic essence of the thing I want to make. Then I make up my own recipe. I've been making granola bars for a couple of decades now, and truth be told I even tried my hand at granola in there once or twice during that time - but in the past I'd always just followed a recipe. In reading up on granola, it became clear that it is very similar to granola bars - go figure. Basically use a bit less moisture, a bit more grains, and bake longer at lower heat, without pressing the mixture into the pan. Instead, you distribute it loosely, and mix it about every half hour while baking.

Here is my first crack at it, which is still in the oven. Based on the taste test going into the oven as well as comments on the terrific smell from my wife and youngest son after it had been in the oven a while, I think this will prove to be a pretty good first kick at the can!

Grilled cheese is never a 'healthy choice', but it can certainly be made a lot better if you choose a good quality whole wheat bread, and a good cheese instead of processed cheese slices. I've experimented with various ways to use good cheese, and slicing it - even thinly - does not work so well as it does not melt as well as you need to hold the two slices of bread together. But grating it works wonderfully!

I've used a number of different types of cheese, including ordinary ones like cheddar and mozza, and more exotic hard cheeses like the asiagio I used in this video. I also choose a decent margarine - even a bargain brand like this one can be good, just read the label.

Pancakes are an easy, wholesome, healthy breakfast to make for kid and adult alike. I usually make a double batch of these on Saturday morning, and it leaves enough leftovers for a few days of breakfasts for the boys. Like most of my recipes, this one is basically a rough guide and lets you experiment until your heart is content. Instead of milk you can use buttermilk, yogurt, kefir, or any similar milk product. For flour I generally use 2/3 whole wheat, and the other 1/3 either plain white flour, barley flour, or oat flour. But you can use all white if you like. Use any type of oil, butter or margarine that you like.

I adapted my cinnamon bun recipe for the dough cycle of our bread machine.

• 350ml liquid - 50/50 water and milk
• heat in microwave about 55 seconds til it is 100F/40C
• mix in 1-2 tablespoon honey til dissolved
• mix in 1 tablespoon dry yeast til dissolved
• let proof 5-10 minutes
• put into bread machine

If you are using bread machine yeast you don't need to proof. But I am not, and I like proofing yeast anyway

Actually, I should say these are #2’s favorite pancakes — so much so that he has named them after himself, leading to strange breakfast requests that sound as though he’s speaking of himself in the third person. They are tall, not overly sweet, and have a nice nuttiness to the flavour.

Mmmm, there used to be a little stand in front of the train station in Cologne that was famous for the best Reibkuchen (literally : rubbed/grated cakes) in the city. I remember them well! This recipe is directly from Dr Oetker's "Schulkochbuch" (School Cook Book) which is what they use in cooking schools in Germany.

I wanted to try something a little different, and since I already had the deep fryer on the counter from making french fries for supper last night, and still had some potatoes left from it, I figured "why not?". We don't eat deep fried food often, but when we do, we do it right :-)