Mjeddrah
BY MARY FRANCES L.
Adapted from Frances Moore Lappé‘s Diet for a Small Planet.
Legend has it this is the "mess of potage“ that smelled so good,
Esau gave his birthright away to his
brother Jacob. At any rate, it is a
great way to live off rice and beans
and clean out the salad drawer in the
fridge during isolation.
How I came to mjeddrah, or all roads
lead to Rome: growing up, my father
had business with Saudi Arabia
and my mother loved international
cooking, including Middle Eastern.
Small Planet was the cookbook I
took off her shelf to college (where I
studied the economics of developing
countries). Frances Moore Lappé was
a forerunner for the issues surrounding food security (SDG 2) in
the 1970‘s. Later, I read in Jeff Smith‘s The Frugal Gourmet Keeps
the Feast (cooking in biblical times) that, of course, even brown
rice wasn‘t authentic. Barley and a grain more like emmer or
spelt would have been regional. His recipe with those grains is
out-of-this-world good, so if you have them, enjoy. The emmer
needs an hour‘s head start before adding the lentils and barley for
the last 45 minutes. Plus, it would require an extra trip to a health
food store. As corona times call for stress-lowering simplicity, I
give you the first mjeddrah recipe I read. I wish all our readers a
good meal, with conversations that strengthen the family bonds.
Do these recipes sound good? Order Let‘s Stay In to
find the recipes and more just like them!
Lockdown Loaf
BY HILARY W.
You might wonder why anyone would bake their own
bread in Germany, home of the greatest bakeries
in the world. However, there is something very
comforting about the smell and taste of fresh-baked
bread in a quarantine!
This recipe will allow you to skip the lines at the
bakeries and get around the fact that yeast is currently
impossible to find. The beer and baking soda allow
the bread to rise, without kneading or rising cycles, so
the bread is incredibly fast and easy to make. It has
a slightly moist and dense texture, however, which
makes for great toast. This recipe was inspired by
Chelsea Winters, a celebrity chef from New Zealand.
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