Bulk Up Your Pantry, January 7-13th!
It's time to Bulk Up Your Pantry!
January 7-13, we'll be highlighting Bulk foods through recipes, demos, store tours, raffles, and more. I've been reading up on Bulk foods myself to prepare for this week and educate our staff and shoppers about Bulk foods. Here are few of the things I think are neat:
Hibiscus Tea:
This beautifully colored tea, made from hibiscus flowers, has a tart, cranberry-like flavor and is very high in Vitamin C, perfect for this time of year. It lends its color to many herbal tea blends that are red, like Red Zinger, by Celestial Seasonings. It's good hot or iced, or even lacto-fermented into healthy, fizzy sodas.
Kombu:
Kombu, known more commonly in English as kelp, is a sea vegetable that lends wonderful flavor to soups. Use a 3x3 strip much like you would a bouillon cube, except it's much better for you. High in minerals, it also is known in Japan to be a wonderful digestive aid, great for making a stock for miso soup or for cooking with dried beans to increase their digestibility.
Short, Medium, and Long Grain Brown Rice:
It's fun to think of choosing a "house" rice that you keep as a staple in your cupboard. I start with this set. Short grain rice cooks up chewy and sticky, and most often accompanies Japanese and Chinese meals. Medium grain rice plays well with all styles of cooking, and long grain rice is the rice of choice in countries that like their rice fluffy, like the curry countries: India, Thailand, Burma, etc. Aromatic long grain varieties like basmati (India) and jasmine (Thai) are even more country specific.
Dried Beans and Lentils:
Size matters: for cooking, that is. How much time do you want to spend cooking your beans on any particular night? The larger the bean, the longer it takes to cook. Red lentils on the left cook in just 30 minutes - I think of them as the "fast food" alternative in Bulk! You can have a quick lentil soup or dal in a snap. Local yellow-eye beans (think baked beans) are like the "slow food" of Bulk - heirloom, native to this region, and a time investment - but oh, so worth it.. Both types of legumes benefit from soaking overnight to increase their digestibility - and then rinsing the soaking water and cooking them in fresh water: when time allows, of course!
Whole Oats and Steel Cut Oats:
For the first time, we have local and organic whole oats and steel cut oats from Jack Lazor's Butterworks Farm. The truth is, all oats, whether they are whole, steel-cut, rolled or even ground into flour, are equally nutritious, since nothing has been removed during milling. But the texture and taste of whole and steel-cut oats is definitely my favorite for breakfast. I've discovered over time that if I simply add milk and maple syrup to them, I get quite the sugar rush: Better for me to eat them with lots of toasted shredded coconut, nuts, some dried fruit, maybe a banana, and THEN add the milk and honey or maple syrup.
Sucanat (Whole Cane Sugar)
Speaking of sweeteners, I find this to be one of the most versatile alternatives to white sugar. This is what sugar would look like (and does look like in a lot of the world) when it hasn't been highly refined the way our common granulated sugar is. It's simply whole cane juice, boiled down and evaporated, with nothing taken away - the minerals like calcium and iron we associate with molasses are still in there. You can use this 1:1 in recipes that call for white sugar, and it has a slightly more caramel taste and color. Oh, Sucanat is a trade name that stands for SUgar CAne NAtural - but I think it's kind of a confusing name for most people!
For a full list of demos happening this week, visit the Bulk Up Your Pantry page on our website.