Cooking Your Local Produce Brings Inspirations For Your CSA Or Your Farmers Market Shopping

I have to admit that I'm super-surprised that CSAs didn't take over my kitchen.  I have joined them for several years now, and I always figured that the shares would become a theme through HowChow with me writing about the dishes that I made.

It never happened.  I love Gorman Farm in Laurel.  I have posted several times about CSA options around Howard County.  But the new discoveries were few, and I felt bad when the cabbages rotted in the back of my fridge.

All that said, I recommend the adventure to anyone.  The vegetables have been terrific, and I know a bunch of people who get thrills along with good food -- including AnnieRie and Kat who blog about their CSA finds.

With more assistance is my friend Lisa from the Lisa B., Mrs. S. blog with a carry-along companion for your forays into CSAs and farmers markets:

The CSA and farmers market season begins soon. (May 7th here in Howard County.)  If you're new or even just relatively new to CSAs, at one point or another you will likely look at an item in your share and wonder, "How do I even cook that?" The answer is here:

My friend Greta Hardin has written Cooking Your Local Produce, and reading it had me feel like she was in the kitchen teaching me. 

The recipes are easy to follow -- even for the ingredients you may have never cooked before (garlic scapes, anyone?) -- while also offering variations to make the months of kale and collard greens more interesting.  One of my favorite recipes is the Warm Fennel and Purple Cabbage Slaw.  Traditional coleslaw is great, but try this if you're looking for something less sweet-and-sour, more savory and fresh.

This cookbook really shines in its organization.  Instead of sorting recipes by season or dish, chapters are organized by ingredient type.  Leaves and shoots, flowers and fruits, seeds and roots each get their own sections, and the resources in the back can't be beat.  Greta includes an ingredient guide with photos, descriptions, and quick cooking ideas to make those farmers market trips easier.  Follow Cooking Your Local Produce on Facebook to get more cooking tips and inspiration, as well as news about a future app.

If you're in this market, I also recommend Jacob Bishop's Vegetables Everyday that I reviewed several years ago.  He also organizes the recipes by the main ingredient.  He has really smart, interesting and simple preparations that you can follow or doctor with your own inspirations.  And check out the farmers market news and schedule on the county's Web site about the farmers markets.

Lunar New Year: Learn To Make Seafood Dumplings From Cha Ya's Growing Video Line

Cha Ya Asian Bistro has updated its cooking video lessons in time for the Lunar New Year.

Check out the video above to see the chef making scallop dumplings.  This one has even-more instructions about forming the steamed treats -- a perfect pair if you buy dumpling wrappers at an Asian supermarket and your own filling recipe.

My favorite dumpling resource is Andrea Nguyen's cookbook Asian Dumplings.

Hat tip to Jessie X who spotted the video.

Jerusalem And Plenty -- Cookbooks Where Everything Is Imaginative, Nothing Is Difficult

Chicken, fennel and clementines

Yotam Ottolenghi just cooks better than I do.

You shouldn't be surprised since he is an internationally-known chef, but I was surprised at how much fun I've had in his cookbooks Plenty and Jerusalem.

Mrs. HowChow bought the books.  I actually passed when I saw them at Sweet Elizabeth Jane in Ellicott City.  The pictures are too pretty.  Ottolenghi is a restaurant chef.  I pass on celebrity chefs, and I've been happy in recent years with Mark Bittman and some ethnic cookbooks.

Mrs. HowChow saw the brillance.  She wanted the eggplant with pomegranates on the cover of Plenty.  She saw lots of vegetables. She saw combinations that sing.  As soon as I opened the books, she added a few dozen stickies to show the dishes that she'd like me to make.

Everything that I've made has been spectacular.  Everything seems imaginative, but nothing has been difficult.  These are terrific books for anyone who wants a healthy mix of vegetables, grains and meat -- but with flavor.

Barley and pomegranates -- really!

A salad of lentils, tomatoes and Gorgonzola.  A hearty eggplant with pomegranates and a buttermilk-yogurt sauce.  Chicken roasted with fennel and clementines.  Jerusalem draws a mix of recipes from co-author Sami Tamimi's hometown.  Plenty collects vegetarian dishes heavy on the Mediterranean, but running from Italy to Indonesia.

These recipes are terrific for me because my simple can be bland.  I can eat lentils straight from the pot, and Mrs. HowChow has had to point out that they're not inspiring even if they're healthy.  Ottolenghi make lentils enticing with some oven-dried tomatoes, that Gorgonzola, and generous dashes of herbs.

That variety runs through the books.  Jerusalem does traditional recipes, but Plenty is a riot of modern variety -- eggs baked over arugula and topped with yogurt, barley tossed in a salad with celery and pomegranates.  Ottolenghi uses spices and herbs available anywhere, but his dishes taste fresh and exciting -- even when the preparation is as simple as "cook the barley, then mix with a bunch of stuff that you chopped or poured from bottles."

These books are some of the best fun that I have ever had with thyme, dill, parsley and chives.  Ottolenghi must live near Lotte or H Mart because he'll suggest three or four different herbs in a recipe.  You can't buy $10 in herbs for just a few tablespoons of each.  So I have bought them at one of the Asian markets -- and planned for several Ottolenghi recipes so I can use the purchase over an entire week.

Go try these books. Check them out at the Howard County library.  Buy them from Amazon from one of the associate links.  Just go explore the mix.

Check out all my cookbook reviews.  Most are available at the library if you want to check them out.  (Update: And check out the Fiercely Fresh post about Jerusalem and a butternut squash recipe.)

Cookbooks For Next Summer: Flip Now To See If You Want To Pickle Or Can The Best Of 2013

Cukes, hot peppers and snow peas ready to be pickled last summer

Think now about the upcoming spring, and start to make a few plans if you want to play with canning.

Over the past two years, I have dabbled a bit in preserving vegetables.  Some spectacular tomato sauce and pickled beets.  Some good salsas, a tomato relish, and yellow tomato jam.  Still learning how to pickle cucumbers successfully.  All in all, I have poured a lot of vinegar, and it has been mid-winter fun to pour the flavor of summertime out of a jar.

The real point of canning is to grab a whole lot of something when it's cheap or when you have time to cook.  Then you preserve that flavor in glass jars for the rushed nights when opening a can feels like a victory.

For my ingredients, I have gone two ways.  The romantic is Larriland Farm in Woodbine, where I have picked blueberries, tomatoes and beets on the volume discount.  The practical is the Asian groceries stores like Lotte or H Mart in Catonsville.  Beets, snow peas, cucumbers and more are seasonably cheap, and I buy a bunch to put some away.

Either way, it's a fun project for anyone who likes to cook -- but maybe bursts of cooking rather than steady time every week.  It's great fun to put away salsa or jelly or relish and then be able to create a weeknight meal with the twist of a wrist.  Simple tomato sauce is a revelation in January.  It's like covering pasta with the taste of August.  Grate some cheese, and it's so much better than a jar of commercial sauce.

Growing Up In A Korean Kitchen By Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall: A Cookbook To Teach You Korean

Sautéed cucumber, steamed eggplant

In many ways, there is nothing I'd like more than bringing a little Korean into the house.

It's easy to eat Korean food around Howard County, but it was  a challenge to learn to cook the stuff.  After test-driving a bunch of cookbooks, Growing Up In A Korean Kitchen is my recommendation for someone inspired by Shin Chon Garden.


Korean recipes are pretty easy and wonderfully healthy as well.  Lots of vegetables.  Some easy pickles.  Some soups and stews.  Some grilled meat.  You could enjoy Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall's cookbook just for side dishes and main courses to incorporate into your regular meals -- a cucumber salad, steamed eggplant, braised spicy chicken, a ginseng chicken soup.

Mostly, that's what I have done.  I used the clam cake recipe when I overbought seafood.  I made hot pepper sauce that ended up in everything from eggs to pasta sauce.  The steamed eggplant has become a staple technique that I can alter with different flavors.

Sugar Baby by Gesine Bullock-Prado

Peanut brittle

You cannot give someone a better gift than Gesine Bullock-Prado's cookbook Sugar Baby.

Trust me.  If you're generous to the cook in your life, then you could be eating taffy and marshmallows as well.  You could be comparing different batches of caramels, suggesting different nut mixes for crunchy brittles.

Sugar Baby is a cookbook of desserts that aren't cookies and cake.  It's candies, fudge, toffee and even lollipops.  Mrs. HowChow saw Gesine make macarons on the Today Show, and I bought the book because I saw good things happening.

Go To Daedalus To Check Out Cookbooks

If you have a little patience and a taste for cookbooks, make a short trip to Daedalus Books in Columbia.

Last weekend, I wandered the stacks for more than an hour with my brother-in-law, a book lover who is always an inspiration to stop at the bookstore that I drive past every week.

Daedalus sells remainders and other odd-lot books and music.  That means you can't guarantee what you'll find, but you might always discover something interesting.  Daedalus isn't selling dollar books.  It fills a spot where the books are cheaper than retail, but still good enough to worth your time and your money.

Last weekend, they had a pile of the Food Matters Cookbook that I recommend. Priced about the same as Amazon, but you can cook from it tonight if you stop at Daedalus today.  Plus, you can check out hundreds of other books, including some that I recognized like One Big Table by Molly O'Neill and Local Breads by Daniel Leader.

Pickled Eggs By Mark Bittman -- They're So Easy, And You Can't Get Enough Magenta Eggs

One thing that impressed me about Mark Bittman is that you barely have to shop for even his most-interesting recipes.

Hard boiled eggs?  Got them.  Cider vinegar?  In the pantry.  Thin-sliced onion.  Check.  Grated beets and horseradish?  Okay, maybe grab those at the store.

I cooked a dinner party recently where one guest was newly vegan and one gets sick from gluten.  (And one just doesn't like the taste of cheese, but that was a footnote.)  An antipasto plate seemed like the perfect way to let people take whatever food worked for them, so I flipped through cookbooks looking for items that would be tasty, beautiful and could be cooked ahead.

Enter Bittman's pickled eggs from How To Cook Everything Vegetarian.  You basically peel your eggs and put them in a large jar or bowl -- something that can take the heat of boiling water, but preferably has a tight-fitting lid.  Then you cook a mixture of vegetables, vinegar, water, salt and sugar until the onions are soft.  Pour that over the eggs and refrigerate for two days to a week.

So easy, and you get magenta eggs.  Slice them in quarters, and the yellow yolk contrasts with the beet-stained whites.  They're a little more firm than regular eggs with a taste from the vinegar and horseradish.  Great on the antipasto plate.  Great sliced on salads.  Delicious enough to just eat in our lunches.

These eggs ended up on a plate with some cut vegetables, eggplant dip, and sliced chorizo from Roots.  For the beets, I used the huge storage beets from Super Grand in Laurel or one of the other Korean supermarkets.  You can get one beet -- all you need for this recipe -- for less than a bunch of the tiny beets with their greens at a regular store.

Mom's Organic Market: Your Place To Bring Bittman's Book And Add New Stuff To Your Plate

I'm not a natural follower of the natural markets -- too suspicious of supplements and packaged food to flock to the organic joints.

But I'm being converted to Mom's Organic Market in Jessup -- by the selections and by its location in the midst of good food.

Anyone willing to make an effort for food in Howard County should know the organic markets -- David's Natural in Columbia, Roots in Clarksville, and Mom's (formerly My Organic Market) in Jessup.  Yet for years, they weren't places that I visited in depth.  So many aisles dedicated to vitamins, expensive packaged brands, and what I'll call "no" foods -- no gluten, no sugar, no meat . . .

I want "yes" food.  Delicious food.  Happy food, and I was pushed to open my eyes at Mom's by Mark Bittman and Frank's Seafood.

Bittman and friends got me back on a kick of whole grains and beans.  The organic markets offer bulk aisles of brown rice, amaranth, bulgar, quinoa and more.  I experimented by taking a few cups at a time and cooking my way through books like Super Natural Cooking and Whole Grains Everyday.  They're the entry drug for healthy cooking.

Then Frank's got me to really look around.

Food Matters Cookbook By Mark Bittman

Mark Bittman has finally started to make things up, and he could change your life -- or least your pantry and freezer.

Three of Bittman's cookbooks are stalwards on my cookbook shelf, but it's his new Food Matters Cookbook where he invents dishes from scratch to change the way you eat.

Before we get serious, let's start with a basic pitch:  Buy -- or borrow -- the Food Matters Cookbook because it's delicious.  Straight-forward recipes to jazz up your weeknights.  Easy ideas about using your freezer to turn one afternoon of work into days of great food.  If you value fresh food, then you'll treasure this cookbook.

If nothing else, get Food Matters to break your rut of jarred pasta sauce.  Bittman does 60+ pages of noodles inspired by everything from classics to Mexican flavors, paired with everything from fennel to artichokes, from a basic lasagna to an inspired cabbage-oranges-and-chickpeas.  Flavors, imagination and enough 30-minute ideas that you'll add something to your repertoire.

Planet Barbecue by Steven Raichlen: It's Grilling Week At HowChow And Time To Try New Food

Grilling season has arrived, and you should check out Steven Raichlen's Planet Barbecue if you want to get beyond the burger rut -- and maybe open the door to Howard County's ethnic shopping.

I have tried to find a better grilling cookbook.  Literally.  I got a paperback copy of Planet Barbecue, and I'm leery about reviewing a book just because someone sent it for free.  Generally, I avoid TV chefs and paperback books, so I cooked from Planet Barbecue while pulling a half dozen other books from the library.

Planet Barbecue stands out because it's actually creative.  For weeks, I have been flipping page to page and thinking, "Oh, I want to eat that."  It's techniques and dishes that are unusual, but accessible enough that I'm raring to try.

Grinding my own lamb for kabobs.  Baking bread wrapped on a flat skewer.  Stuffing small eggplants with bacon.  Coating grilled corn with cheese.  By the time that I served up tacos of marinated pork and grilled pineapple, I realized that I was not only going to priase Raichlen's book -- but I am going to have to buy a hardcover copy so that it can survive a few years in my kitchen.

Anyone could cook from Planet Barbecue.  But I love writing about the local ethnic markets, so I'm going to particularly recommend this book for anyone who wants an excuse to explore this summer.  Whole fish at an Asian grocery.  Lamb from a halal butcher.  Spices from a Mexican market.  Skewers at the new Persian store on Snowden River.  Raichlen does a wonderful job of talking about ingredients that are beyond a supermarket, but absolutely within your reach and guaranteed to bring new flavors to your grill.

Andrea Nguyen: Asian Dumplings

The real magic occurs in cookbooks where the author has something to say, not just something to sell.

Andrea Nguyen's Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More offers an education about a continent's snacks and meals.  Avoid the celebrity cookbooks and learn instead to make everything from Indian samosas to Filipino desserts, from dumplings filled with soup to steamed buns stuffed with pork.  Nguyen teaches technique, and she opens a series of mouth-watering doors -- foods that I have never cooked and that really taste like the Asian restaurants that I love.

Asian Dumplings is a book of projects. This isn't Jack Bishop's ideas for weeknight vegetables. Nguyen has instructions for dough, diagrams for dumpling folding, and dozens of recipes that run for two pages of text. The steamed buns recipe is actually a reference to three other recipes -- a basic yeast dough, a barbecued pork, and a pork filling that you make from the barbeque.  In the wrong hands, this could have been a quaint book about Chinese grandmothers or a fussy volume clogged with detail.  But Nguyen applies a professional writer's eye to explain how to make dumplings and why you would want to try.  Perfect for any modern cook with a little time to prepare ahead. My first project was Shanghai soup dumplings, and they're worth every minute -- plus $20 for the book. I served swirled dumplings in ceramic Chinese spoons. They burst when you bite them, and soup pours into your spoon. It's just fun to spoon out Nguyen's little packets and watch people smile.

Rick Bayless' Mexican Everyday

I went to Rick Bayless for simple Mexican recipes, but he has lured me deeper and deeper into Mexican cooking because flavors outweigh the work in every recipe.

I braised a lamb shoulder last weekend. I hadn't intentionally braised anything before. I hadn't even seen a lamb shoulder. Ironically, Mexican Everyday is Bayless' cookbook of relaxed, simple meals. His Chicago restaurants and his prior books introduced Americans to many Mexican ingredients, but Bayless had a reputation for demanding that people spend hours looking for specific chili varieties and fruit that didn't have English names.

Mexican Everyday (and the accompanying PBS series) was Bayless' chance for accessible recipes. It is worth buying just for the straight-forward tomatillo salsas-- one fresh and one roasted. Tomatillos are available year-round at Lily's Mexican Market or any of the Asian grocery stores, and they still firm a long time in the crisper. The fresh salsa is basically a puree of tomatillos, garlic, chilis and cilantro, and Bayless' instructions have made countless weeknight meals where the salsa is the main flavor with tortillas, cheese and some chicken or beans. That is the entry-level drug that will soon have you trying your hand at jalapeno-baked fish, chipotle shrimp, and a fresh lime sorbet that were all clear and successful.

Jack Bishop's Vegetables Every Day

Jack Bishop's Vegetables Every Day is a masterpiece because the books seems so simple, but comes jammed with so much more thought than most cookbooks.

Bishop wrote a book for people who want to eat vegetables. Any people, any vegetables. Grab any item from the produce department, and you can make several of Bishop's dishes from any stocked pantry. Even better, carry Vegetables Every Day to the store so that you can pick the best-looking vegetable and grab the few other ingredients to make the dish that catches your fancy.

Bishop didn't write a book based on some foreign cuisine. He has no celebrity to sell, no gimmick, no photographs. The book has thin chapters for almost 70 vegetables. Each chapter has a half-dozen ways to cook that vegetable, designed as side dishes or appetizers but most could be dinner if you grab some bread while you are at the store.

Kimiko Barber: A Japanese Guide To H Mart

H Mart is my favorite place for food, and Kimiko Barber has written a map for anyone who wants to explore an Asian grocery store -- at least the Japanese sections.

Barber, a Japanese expat who writes cookbooks in England, offers two cookbooks that I'd recommend to anyone who wanders the Asian aisles and wonders how to use the treasures wrapped in plastic packages. Noodles. Seaweeds. Tofu. Daikon radishes. I walk past these items, and I never know how to get them on my table.

My first hints were in The Chopsticks Diet, Barber's new cookbook that uses Japanese ingredients for light, flavorful dishes. Ignore the diet stuff. Most diet cookbooks are horrible. Barber's is imaginative and fun, although a little laden with questionable medical advice. The recipes are "fusion" dishes -- each uses a Japanese ingredient like dashi, miso paste or soba noodles, but they're completely accessible. Mostly, they're simple like a salad of shredded daikon radish with carrot, cucumber, peppers and shelled edamame, Japanesed-up with a vinaigrette made from rice vinegar, soy sauce, honey and yuzu juice.

After a lunch of pit beef at Oakey's and Pioneer, my friend and I cooked a light dinner for Mrs. HowChow highlighted by a "chilled misopacho" -- a gazpacho soup flavored with soy sauce and red miso paste. Flavorful

and fresh with a second plate of seared scallop and tuna, fava beans and pomegranate served over sushi rice and herbs.

From there, I branched into Barber's The Japanese Kitchen. (Full disclosure: I emailed the publisher trying to get a JPG of the Chopstick Diet's cover, and they sent me a free copy of The Japanese Kitchen. But I'm only writing because I love both books. Trust me, there was a third book by someone else. Not writing about it.)

The Japanese Kitchen is the perfect cookbook for someone who wants to explore. Barber organizes by ingredient -- a section on noodles, on vegetables, on fish, on sauces . . . . Each ingredient gets two or three pages, and you get a truly interesting explanation of each product and then two to four recipes. You could buy this book just for the noodles section. Soba, udon, somen, hiyamugi . . . They're in every Asian market, and they're cheap and flexible. But I never knew how to use them until Barber explained the differences and gave me some options to try. Then, I paged on and learned how to use seaweed and lotus roots, budock and salmon roe. (Salmon roe looks great, but it's a special occasion food because H Mart only sells $10 packages. Too bad my family demands super-traditional Thanksgiving.)

These are Japanese recipes, not the fusion of the Chopstick Diet. Chilled somen noodles were flavored with shiitake mushrooms, bonito flakes, mirin and seaweed. That's delicious. It's foreign in a way that made me want to explore the rest of the book, from the freeze-dried tofu to the mackerel simmered in miso. Ironically, the books' only stumbles come from Barber's British side -- some flawed conversions from metric, references to "British HP sauce" and "green bacon," and an explanation of a soba dish by describing it as "the Japanese equivalent of haggis on Burns' Night in Scotland." (Burns' Night?)

Most cooks have a few good ideas, but not enough inspiration to make them worth buying. Barber's books joined my "first team" shelf because these are recipes that I want to cook -- simple enough for weeknights, but exotic enough to be interesting -- and food that I want to eat: heavy on flavor, light on the stomach because it's mostly vegetables, fish, noodles and rice. The Japanese Kitchen is also extremely well-written. Clear explanations. A little Japanese culture. I'm going to carry it on months worth of H Mart trips, and I'll discovery something new every time.

Below is one recipe to try from The Japanese Kitchen. All the ingredients are available at Lotte in Ellicott City, H Mart in Catonsville, or Super Grand in Laurel. They're all pretty cheap, and they're all staples that you can keep in your pantry and use when you want. Don't be intimidated by the dashi. H Mart sells bonito flakes in a package with a bunch of small packages inside. (It's the red packet on the right of the top photo.) It was very easy to use small package. The rest is safe in my pantry. Nothing smells like dried fish.

You can use these ingredients again. I used the extra mushrooms to bulk up a tomato, mushroom and eggplant sauce for polenta. I used the nori for sushi rolls. I'll use the other stuff as I work through Barber's book.

Hiyashi Somen

(from The Japanese Kitchen)

15 oz dried somen noodles

For the dipping sauce

8 dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in four ounces of hot water for 15 minutes

8 ounces (1 cup) of dashi broth (see below)

2 ounces (3 1/2 TBL) mirin

2 ounces (3 1/2 TBL) soy sauce

Condiments

1 ounce (2-inch piece) fresh ginger root, peeled and shredded

shredded peel of yuzu (or lime, which I used)

1 sheet nori (dried seaweed), shredded

4 scallions, finely chopped

Put the mushrooms, their soaking liquid and all the other dipping sauce ingredients in a saucepan and heat over medium heat. Simmer gently until the mushrooms are soft, then let cool. Remove the mushrooms and chop them finely.

Boil a saucepan of water and add the noodles. Stir with chopsticks to separate them. When the water is about to boil, add 1 cup of cold water and let it return to a boil. Drain, rinse under cold running water and drain again. (Alternatively: Cook the noodles according to the package's directions.) Serve the noodles floating in a big bowl of ice water. Serve with a cup of dipping sauce, the mushrooms and condiments. Each person can mix the noodles and condiments. The first night, I dipped the noodles in the sauce. For lunch the next day, I pour the sauce on noodles and packed them in a plastic container.

Dashi

(From The Japanese Kitchen)

1 piece dried konbu (kelp), postcard size

4 c. water

3/4 ounce bonito flakes (about a handful)

Put the konbu with the water in a saucepan. Heat gently and take the konbu out when it begins to float. When the water begins to boil, remove it from the heat. Add the bonito flakes. Let them settle to the bottom. Strain the broth through a fine strainer lined with paper towels.

For more about Asian foods, check out my post about Asian grocery stores. Or check out the post about "Eight Japanese Ingredients" by a woman who attended a Kimiko Barber demonstration in London.

You can borrow The Chopstick Diet from the Howard County library, which is where I discovered it. Or you can buy either book on Amazon through these links (which means Amazon would pay me a referral fee):

Delicious: Grains at the Organic Markets

If you want to cook grains, start with plastic containers, then go to a crunchy supermarket.

Oats, bulgar, brown rice, couscous, etc. are delicious if you can find them and if you can keep them organized. I always ended up with a tangle of plastic bags and half-empty boxes. Until I bought tall containers, I never knew what I had, and I was never inspired to use them. I bought Decor Tellfresh containers, and they're great because you can jam more tall, thin containers on a pantry shelf. But buy anything that seals. The Container Store is expensive.

Grains are cheap. They're fun to try. They're super-nutritious. And you can get a world of beauties at Roots in Clarksville, David's Natural Market near downtown Columbia, or My Organic Market in "Columbia East."

Pick four or five grains to try. Start with two or three cups each to see what you like.

Go back for more of what tickles your fancy. Couscous for a simple side dish. Bulgar for salads. Barley for a

risotto variation. Rolled oats, quinoa and millet for breakfast cereal, then later for inspirations like "quinoa and carmelized onions." Wild rice for an exotic touch.

Borrow How To Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman from the library. He has descriptions and basic directions for two dozen grains. Then, he has 40 pages of recipes. (He also has recipes for lentils, which you should buy in bulk when you're trying the grains.) Or borrow Whole Grains Every Day Every Way by Lorna Sass. Her recipes are a little less accessible, but she has a brilliant section where she talks about making large pots of grain, then freezing them for future use.

My whole-grain weekend breakfast -- make several servings because you can store in the fridge and microwave a bowl for 2-3 mornings:

1. Put six cups of water in a pot and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer.
2. Set the timer for 40 minutes. Then add one cup of steel-cut oats. (They're different from rolled oats. Trader Joe's sells containers of steel-cut oats in the cereal section.)
3. Cover the pot, but leave a crack so that it doesn't boil over. Stir occasionally throughout the rest of the time.
4. When the timer says 25 minutes, add 1/3 cup of amaranth.
5. When the timer says 20 minutes, add 1/3 cup of millet.
6. When the timer says 15 minutes, add 1/3 cup of quinoa and 1/2 or more cups of raisins or other dried fruit.
7. As the timer runs out, the cereal should be moist without standing water. It should be soft, but still have a little "bite to it. You can add a little water if it dries out or stick to the pot. You can cook it a few minutes more.
8. When the cereal is done, add honey or brown sugar to your taste.
   

Try that once, then adapt to what you like. Use the grains in the mix that you like. Add wheat germ at the end if you want. Add fresh fruit like bananas or apples -- either early if you want them to disintegrate or late if you want a crunch. I'll eat this without sweeteners. Mrs. HowChow would consider that a punishment, not a treat.

You can borrow How To Cook Everything Vegetarian or Whole Grains Every Day from the Howard County library. Or you can buy either book on Amazon through these links (which means Amazon would pay me a referral fee):

My Organic Market (Columbia East)
7351 Assateague Dr. #190
Jessup, MD 20794
410-799-2175
www.myorganicmarket.com

NEAR: It's on Rte 175 just east of I-95. There is a large shopping center on the right just after you cross Rte 1. Look for the Starbucks. MoM is in that shopping center. It's a bit tricky to return home. You have to exit east-bound on Rte 175 and U-turn at the next light.

David's Natural Market

5430 Lynx Lane

Columbia, MD 21044

410-730-2304

www.davidsnaturalmarket.com

NEAR: It's in the Wilde Lake shopping center near the Columbia Mall. The shopping center is on Twin Rivers Road. Turn in at the light with a KFC. David's is on the right in a building separate from the main village center. David's has a main store with dairy and packaged goods, then a separate produce store down the row.

Roots Market
5805 Clarksville Square Drive
Clarksville, MD 21029
443-535-9321
www.rootsmkt.com

NEAR: It's on Rte 108 just north of Rte 32. The Clarksville Square shopping center is on the west side filled with "crunchy" businesses owned by the same people -- a restaurant, a pet supply shop, a decorating place. Look for the Jiffy Lube on Rte 108.