Triple Bran Muffins

Combine
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup oat bran
1 cup wheat bran
1/2 cup ground flax seed
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 cup chopped dates

In another bowl, combine
1 cup apple juice
1 cup milk
3 eggs
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup molasses
2 Tbsp vanilla
1 1/2 tsp salt (more or less)
Whisk together

Combine wet and dry ingredients and spoon into 12 muffin tins. They will be full.
Bake at 425F for 20 minutes.

I like to fool around with this recipe to produce different kinds of muffins. Basically, the dry ingredients stay the same (except for the dates which could change to raisins, craisins, chopped apples, oranges - whatever, and you can be creative with the wet ingredients, as long as the total volume is roughly the same. That's what I like about muffins, you can be very rough in your ingredients indeed. Try: mashed bananas with raspberry juice and frozen raspberries; chopped apples with a tsp of cinnamon and substitute a cup of oats for one cup of the flour; use your imagination and whatever you happen to have on hand.

Fall Apart Deer Roast

So we pulled a deer roast out of the freezer, around 4 in the afternoon and nuked it till it was thawed (hippies use microwaves, who knew!).

By the way, I didn't name the recipe. Waldo found it on this site that also had recipes name Fried Deer Steaks With a Lil' Kick, Cheesy Deerloaf, and BBQ'D Deer Balls (which, thank God, are actually just made of plain old ground deer meat). I've added the site to the list on the sidebar because, well, you never know when you might need to cook a giant critter.

Anyway, the recipe with Waldo changes:

~ 2 to 4 lb deer roast
~ 2 medium onions, chopped
~ 2 cloves garlic, chopped
~ 1 lb baby carrots
~ salt and pepper
~ 2 cups water
~ 2 beef bouillon cubes
~ 2 tbsp corn starch

Place the roast in a crockpot. Add the onions, garlic, carrots, salt and pepper to taste and the water.

Cover and cook on high for 4 hours. Check the water and add more if needed. Drain the juice into a saucepan. We never checked it once.

To the juice, add the bouillon cubes. Stir to dissolve. Heat to a boil. Stir the corn starch together with a little water in a cup. Add the corn starch and stir until the juice thickens. Sharon did all of this part.

Pour the gravy back into the crockpot over the meat. Cook on low for 1 hour. We skipped this part, Sharon made the gravy and we just used it out of the saucepan (actually, we started to use the argumentative gravy boat (it picked a fight with the pepper shaker once) but it had suffered internal injuries after its last fight and had to be put down mid-meal, the saucepan finished it off).

Serve with mashed potatoes or rice. Super good with mashed potatoes

Meag was not a huge fan but she still cleaned her plate and I think I saw her snitch an extra bite, I know that Alice did and I know that I did. I thought it was heaven on a plate but then, I grew up eating deer and moose etc. Yes, really.

Waldo said that a lot of the recipes that he saw called for allspice and that he wouldn't mind trying that the next time. Makes sense to me, my mom always used to put cinnamon in with moosemeat because it gets rid of the game-y taste (which I happen to be personally fond of).

Okay, so last night there was this ham ...

A gigantic, gorgeous ham served with boiled potatoes and green beans with what looked like mushrooms and almonds in them (I didn't see them being made so I can't be sure). We put the ham in the over at 300 (I think) and pretty much left it there all day. A little longer than we should have actually or meant to, we got to setting at John's house and didn't make it back in time. Anyway, this is not the real subject of the post because that's a pretty straightforward meal.

Tonight we had macaroni and cheese like I've never had before. From what I could gather, this is how it went:

6 cups cooked macaroni
1 chopped onion
1/2 each green and red pepper, cut into short strips
1/2 cup each green beans and peas (I think you could probably use frozen)
1 1/2-2 c shredded cheddar
1 big honking pile of ham cut into big chunks with lots of little flakey bits that have bits of heel on them

Cook the macaroni, if you haven't already. Saute the onion and add some garlic if you want (she might have, I didn't see it), add the peppers and cook till onions are translucent. Add the other vegetables and then stir all of it together into a big dutch oven. Throw the lid on and put it in the over until you figure it's done.

It was actually really good. I think if I was going to try to do it at home, I would probably do a bechemel sauce and add the cheese to that before I stirred it all together. The ham... was divine.

Oh yeah, subtract 2 hours from my post time for Willow River time, I'm actually trying not to adjust too much.