barley soup
(An excursus from the chapter)
Most of you know that I'm not very good at following recipes. And I'm also a big health food nut, willing to eat even the weirdest thing/combos if I hear that it's good for me (some of you have tried my "oatmeal-nonfat yogurt" smoothies...yum). Well, both of these facts lead to some interesting food experiments. Poor Byron, he's such a good sport about it.
So I decided to make this barley thing from a slowercooker recipe book that Andrea gave me for my birthday. I'm not sure if it's because I didn't follow the portion requirements or that my slowcooker didn't have a "low" setting (I'm going to say it's the latter) but it turned out to be a pretty gross consistency: gummy, like oatmeal except it's barley. The flavor wasn't all too bad, but it was just so hard to eat. Good old Byron ate a whole bowl of it for dinner last night and another one for lunch today. He's very indulgent.
Well, today I had to remedy this awful barley mush, so, given that I had some canned tomato, I made barley soup instead. This turned out much better. Some canned diced tomatoes, a can of beef broth, more diced fresh veggies, clumps of my barley goulash and voila!
MUCH more appetizing. Only thing is that there's so much of it (like I said, I didn't really follow the original portions, so I think I made double the intended serving size)...so, anyone want to come over and have some barley soup? It's healthy...
Most of you know that I'm not very good at following recipes. And I'm also a big health food nut, willing to eat even the weirdest thing/combos if I hear that it's good for me (some of you have tried my "oatmeal-nonfat yogurt" smoothies...yum). Well, both of these facts lead to some interesting food experiments. Poor Byron, he's such a good sport about it.
So I decided to make this barley thing from a slowercooker recipe book that Andrea gave me for my birthday. I'm not sure if it's because I didn't follow the portion requirements or that my slowcooker didn't have a "low" setting (I'm going to say it's the latter) but it turned out to be a pretty gross consistency: gummy, like oatmeal except it's barley. The flavor wasn't all too bad, but it was just so hard to eat. Good old Byron ate a whole bowl of it for dinner last night and another one for lunch today. He's very indulgent.
Well, today I had to remedy this awful barley mush, so, given that I had some canned tomato, I made barley soup instead. This turned out much better. Some canned diced tomatoes, a can of beef broth, more diced fresh veggies, clumps of my barley goulash and voila!
MUCH more appetizing. Only thing is that there's so much of it (like I said, I didn't really follow the original portions, so I think I made double the intended serving size)...so, anyone want to come over and have some barley soup? It's healthy...
posted by mariyaya | 8:37 PM
1 Comments:
Why doesn't your slow cooker have a "low" setting? That's unfortunate. The "low" setting is important for stews that take 8 hours to cook.
I tried to cook chicken gumbo once using the "high" setting instead of the "low" setting because I didn't have enough time to wait 6 to 7 hours. The chicken meat turned out tougher than it should.
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