Two Grandmas ~ one batch of Jam-Jams

We have two kinds of jam-jams in my family. These oatmeal jam-jams were a specialty of my Grandma Jo. The other is a soft brown sugar cookie jam jam. They were the jam jams of my Grandma Irene.

Grandma Jo often put date jam in her jam jams. Grandma Irene usually filled her jam jams with homemade apple jelly. This reflects their two different styles in the kitchen. Grandma Jo liked to make fancy things for which buying dates and making date jam was a perfectly enjoyable step in the process. Grandma Irene had no time for that. She had already put her time into making apple jelly, so that was the perfect filling for her jam jams.
 
Today in our family, my sister Maureen makes the soft cookie jam jams of my Grandma Irene. They are my dad's favourite cookie ~ Irene was his mom ~ and he still gets a tin of these jam jams for his birthday every year.

As for me, I mix the two: I make Grandma Jo's oatmeal jam jams and fill them with my homemade jam or jelly. Cause I loved my grandmas equally!

Oatmeal Jam-Jams
2 cups flour
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup soft butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup sour milk (mix 1 1/2 tsp vinegar with milk to make 1/2 cup, stir, sit 5 min.)

Grandma’s instructions simply say, "Roll these." To elaborate, mix everything together, form into two balls, wrap in plastic and place it in the fridge to chill for 20-30 minutes.

Using a floured counter and a rolling pin, roll each ball of dough to a thickness of 1/8 inch (1/3 cm). Cut out circles with a cookie cutter or a glass. Re-roll and cut more cookies.

Bake on a cookie sheet for 8-9 minutes at 350 degrees. Cookies should just start to brown.

Transfer hot cookies to a rack to cool. Spread a dollop of jam or preserves on one cookie and press another cookie on top. Store in airtight container. These cookies are crisp when they come out of the oven but the filling will soften them up.

As Canadian as Oats for Breakfast

I started my day with a bowl of oatmeal porridge. Nothing could be more Canadian.

We grow more oats in Canada than anywhere else but Russia. Canada is the second largest producer – and the largest exporter – of oats in the world.

Mountains of our oats are turned into brand name breakfast cereals, oatmeal cookies and granola bars, as well as many raw oat products from rolled oats to steel-cut groats to instant porridge.

Saskatchewan grows about half the oats in Canada followed by Manitoba and Alberta at 18-20 percent each, with the remaining fraction grown by farmers in other provinces. The "oat belt" runs from the Red River Valley in southern Manitoba, up across Saskatchewan like a Miss Universe sash, and north to Alberta's Peace River Country.

According to historians, oats have been grown in Western Canada since the days of the fur trade; they were a major food group of European fur traders and their livestock. Oats were an important crop for the pioneers when, in the days before tractors, oats were the fuel for the horses and oxen who broke the land.

Many are the stories of struggling homesteaders reduced to eating porridge three times a day. Even the Scots could get sick of that!

Speaking of the Scots, oatmeal was the culinary touchstone of immigrants from Scotland, as we read in this except from They Cast a Long Shadow: The story of Moffat, Saskatchewan by Kay Parley:

"Oatmeal was the most popular food and there was porridge on every Scotch table for breakfast, always stirred, as it cooked, with a wooden spurtle. . . Oatmeal was used in scones, cookies, dumplings and puddings. It appeared in fish dishes and meat dishes. It was used to stuff the turkey. New potatoes were coated with it."

Leftover oatmeal was pressed into a wooden box and cooled, after which it could be sliced like bread. This would be fried up for supper or packed for a long journey by horse and buggy as a filling snack along the way, especially in wintertime.

Before we get cooking, here's a lesson in oat vocabulary:

* Oat groats or whole oats are the oat seed with the outer hull removed. They take the longest to cook and are often pre-soaked.
* Steel-cut oats (also called Irish oats or Scotch oats) are oat groats cut into smaller pieces by steel blades.
* Rolled or old-fashioned oats are whole groats flattened in a roller. They cook more quickly than groats.
* Quick oats are chopped groats flattened in a roller. Because they are small and flakey, they cook quite quickly.
* Instant oats are precooked so they can be prepared simply by adding hot water, and are often flavoured and sweetened.

Take note that oats have a high fat content and, once the hull has been removed, can go bad quite quickly. For this reason, most “raw” oat products are steamed and dried so they can be stored at room temperature. Some specialty mills sell un-steamed rolled oats, which have more flavour and nutrients, but should be stored in the freezer.

Here's a recipe for oatmeal made with groats. It's more time consuming than using rolled oats, but it's also more filling and flavourful. You might also like this recipe for chocolate oat clusters.

Apple Honey Oatmeal
1/2 cup steel-cut groats
2 cups water
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup dried apples, chopped
1 tbsp honey

The night before, mix steel-cut groats with water and bring to a boil. Simmer 5 min. Remove from heat, cover and leave overnight.

In the morning, add another 1/2 cup water and bring to a simmer. Add the salt, cinnamon and dried apple. Cook, stirring, until desired porridge consistency is achieved. Stir in the honey and eat!

(This article first appeared in Grainews.)

Back of the Pantry - Raspberries!

In my mission to "eat myself out of house and home" I am looking deep into my pantry and, one by one, bringing out jars of this and that forgotten at the back of the cupboard. This week's find: a jar of luscious raspberries canned in honey syrup two summers ago.

The raspberries were grown at Living Sky Winery, where the owners graciously allowed me to pick the last stray berries after the summer harvest.

I ate them for breakfast with yogurt and muesli. Such a taste of summer on a frigid spring morning!

If you've got canned berries, enjoy them with my homemade muesli. The nuts in this recipe are obviously imported, but the oats, flax and hemp seeds are pure Saskatchewan, as are the honey and canola oil. 

Home for Dinner Muesli
3 cups old fashioned rolled oats
1 cup chopped nuts such as walnuts, almonds and/or hazelnuts
1 cup mixed seeds such as hemp, flax, sunflower and pumpkin
3 tbsp honey
3 tbsp canola oil

Mix together the oats, nuts and seeds. Stir together the honey and oil. If they are too stiff to stir, heat them gently in the microwave. Pour the honey/oil into the oats and mix thoroughly with your hands. Spread the mixture onto a big cookie sheet and bake at 200F for about two hours, stirring every 30 minutes to ensure an even bake. Remove from oven. When cool, store the muesli in an airtight container. If you wish to add dried fruit to the muesli, add your choice of fruit, in your preferred quantities, when the muesli is warm out of the oven. 

Know your oats - Oat vocabulary

When can you eat cookies for breakfast? When they're mostly oats! But first, a lesson in oat vocabulary:

• Oat groats or whole oats are the oat seed with the outer hull removed. They take the longest to cook and are often pre-soaked.

• Steel-cut oats (also called Irish oats or Scotch oats) are oat groats cut into smaller pieces. Also pre-soaked.

• Rolled or old-fashioned oats are whole groats flattened in a roller. They cook more quickly than groats.

• Quick oats are steel-cut groats flattened in a roller. Because they are small and flakey, they cook quite quickly.

• Instant oats are precooked so they can be prepared simply by adding hot water and are often pre-flavoured and sweetened.

Chocolate Oat Clusters

From the website of Only Oats, a gluten-free oat processor in Regina.

1/2 cup butter or margarine

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup milk

6 tbsp cocoa

3 cups rolled oats

1/2 cup coconut

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 tsp vanilla

On medium heat melt butter or margarine, sugar and milk in a saucepan until it boils, stirring often. Add remaining ingredients, mixing well. Remove from heat. Drop by the spoonful onto wax paper. Cool completely.

Ode to Oats

Did you know? Canada is the largest exporter of oats in the world, and much of those oats are grown here in Saskatchewan.

The bulk of Saskatchewan's oats are shipped to the United States and processed into the brand name cereals and granola bars you find in the grocery stores.

You can also buy oats from smaller local companies, like the package of organic oat groats (in the picture) that went into my morning oatmeal. The brand is Willow Creek, which is based in Watson, Saskatchewan.

Apple Honey Oatmeal

Find local dried apples at the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market.

1/2 cup steel-cut oats
2 cups water

1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup dried apples, chopped
1 tbsp honey

The night before, mix steel-cut oats with water and bring to a boil. Simmer 5 min. Remove from heat, cover and leave out overnight. In the morning, add another 1/2 cup water and bring to a simmer. Add the salt, cinnamon and dried apple. Cook, stirring, until desired porridge consistency is achieved. Stir in the honey and eat!

Newspaper column - Breakfast

Published in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix on 20 July 2009

You’ve all heard the advice: a healthy diet starts with a good breakfast. However, I contend that a healthy diet begins with a good Saskatchewan breakfast. So often when we talk about eating locally, we focus on the big meals—dinner with meat, veggies, salad and dessert. But it’s just as easy and just as fun to start each day with a taste of Saskatchewan.

A few years ago, my husband John and I decided to eat locally for a whole year. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. That year is up, but good habits are hard to break. We still stock our larder with locally-produced foods and breakfast is my favourite meal of the day.

This time of year, you may find me out early in the strawberry patch picking berries for a bowl of yogurt and homemade muesli. When the berries are this fresh and so delicious, breakfast is worth celebrating, so I often serve it in a martini glass. It looks as good as it tastes!

In the winter, I eat my muesli in a bowl with dried apples and cherries (that I dried myself) or with berries such as saskatoons and raspberries that I canned with a light honey syrup. Sometimes in winter, we get a warm start to the day with oatmeal porridge sweetened with honey or maple syrup.

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Whether for porridge or muesli, I always try to buy a bag of oats that specifically states it is a product of Saskatchewan. My homemade muesli includes nuts and seeds (which aren’t necessarily from here), plus locally-grown flax and hemp seeds, mixed with canola oil and honey, then toasted in the oven. (I buy the flax at the Saskatoon Farmer’s Market; the hemp seeds come from The Good Seed farm at Birch Hills.)
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Berry smoothies are also a great breakfast idea. We start with local Dairyland yogurt, add a banana, which isn’t local of course, and top it up with frozen blueberries, cranberries, saskatoons and/or strawberries, all locally picked, plus a dash of ground flax.

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When we have a little extra time, or when company is coming, John heats up the griddle and makes wild blueberry pancakes. If I’m cooking, we might have clafoutis, a terrifically easy breakfast custard from France, where it’s traditionally made with cherries. I use a mix of Saskatchewan berries, including the local sour cherry.

Speaking of traditional, bacon and eggs in our house are always local. We get them at the farmers market, or, if we’re at a local meat shop, we pick up good Saskatchewan-made bacon and breakfast sausages. (Currently, our freezer is stocked with breakfast sausage from the Smokehaus in Martensville.)

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As for toast and jam, it’s easy to be local. I make my own bread or buy it at a bakery such as Christie’s. My mom supplies the jam. While it might be hard to turn every breakfast into a local meal, here are some tips to get started:

1) Buy locally-made bacon and breakfast sausage. We have such good butchers in Saskatchewan, it’s easy to find quality products.
2) Pick extra strawberries, saskatoons and sour cherries this summer (available at u-picks) and freeze enough for a smoothie or clafoutis now and then. Wild blueberries may be found at the farmers market when they’re in season.
3) Reach labels and try to buy basic ingredients, such as eggs, oats, honey and flax, that are products of Saskatchewan.

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Here's the recipe for my homemade muesli. And here's the clafoutis (pronounced cla-foo-tee), which will impress everyone at breakfast time, especially the cook!

Prairie Berry Clafoutis
2 tbsp butter
3 eggs
3 tbsp sugar
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups mixed Saskatchewan berries
(fresh or frozen)
1 tbsp flour

Heat the oven to 350F. In the oven, melt the butter in a cast iron skillet or large pie plate, making sure the butter doesn’t brown.

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Put the eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla and salt into a blender and blend until smooth. With the blades running, gradually add 1 cup of flour and mix well. Remove the buttered pan from the oven and pour in the batter.
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Toss the berries with the remaining tbsp of flour. Scatter the fruit over the top of the batter. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the centre of the custard is set. Serve warm, perhaps with a sprinkling of icing sugar.

RHUBARB MATRIMONIAL CAKE

This summer, I have good intentions of trying rhubarb in savoury dishes, but I still seem to be stuck on desserts, like this one. It's a matrimonal date cake without the dates -- rhubarb instead. The recipe is from "Mrs. Marr's Rhubarb Recipes," the cookbook of the historic Marr Residence in Saskatoon. Rhubarb is apropos for a pioneer house since it was one of the easiest, quickest, most versatile vegetables in the prairie garden. Be sure to check out the annual Rhubarb Festival at the Marr Residence on the August long weekend.

Nat's Rhubarb Dessert
8 cups rhubarb
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup tapioca (I used flour)
pinch salt

Crumb mixture:
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups rolled oats (I used 2 cups)
1 1/2 cups brown sugar (I used 1 cup only)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup butter, melted

Mix the first four ingredients and let set for 1 hour. Mix remaining ingredients together until crumbly. Place half the crumbs in 9"x13" pan. Cover with rhubarb. Top with remaining crumbs. Bake at 350F for about 40 min., until the crumb is lightly browned.

Check your pulse - CHICKPEA CHOCOLATE COOKIES

This column appeared in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix on 20 Jan. 2008

The farmers of Saskatchewan want you to eat more lentils, beans, dried peas and chickpeas. Why? Because they want to grow more lentils, beans, dried peas and chickpeas. In the past 25 years, Saskatchewan has become one of the world’s largest producers of these foods, second only to India.

The problem is, the market is saturated. World consumption has actually dropped from nine kilograms per person in the 1960s to about six kilograms per person today. Just think, our farmers went from zero to 25% of the world market in 25 years, even as that market was shrinking. That says a lot about the hard work and superior product coming out of Saskatchewan. So what’s up for the next 25 years?

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That was the topic last week at the annual Pulse Days in Saskatoon. (Pulse is the name given to this class of edible seeds of the legume family.) The goal is to double production of pulse crops in Saskatchewan from about five million acres per year to 10 million acres or more. Once that mark is reached, one-quarter of all crops in the fields will be pulses.

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But if pulse farmers are going to increase production, they need to convince more people to eat their lentils, beans, dried peas and chickpeas. To aid their effort, I’ve compiled a list of reasons why we should do just that:

1) Pulses are good for you. They’re chock full of fibre, protein, vitamins and minerals such as iron. They have a low glycemic index, which makes them good for people with diabetes.

2) Pulses are good for the environment. Pulses take nitrogen from the air and put it into the soil. Nitrogen is a natural fertilizer which all plants need to grow. Most farmers use an artificial fertilizer created from natural gas. With concern over greenhouse gas emissions, growing more pulses is a natural way to cut the carbon footprint of farming and the food we eat.

3) It’s easy to sneak pulses into the diet. Pulses can be ground to a flour and used in baking and other processed foods, so you get the health benefits without a single “bean” in sight. With consumer demand for healthier foods, processing companies such as General Mills are looking at the possibility of including more pulses such as pea fibre. It’s easy to include pulses in home baking, too.

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4) Pulses are diet food. Low in fat and calories, high in nutrients and good carbs. Pulses make you feel fuller so you eat less.

5) Few people are allergic to pulses. People who cannot eat wheat flour do not suffer the same ill effects when eating pulse flour. Also, toasted chickpeas are a nice alternative to nuts. For instance, the University of Saskatchewan has created a fabulous chocolate full of crunchy bits of chickpea. You’d never know!

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Try the chickpea-chocolate combination in this recipe from Saskatchewan Pulse Growers. You'll find more desserts with pulses here and here.

Chocolate Chickpea Cookies
1 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup soft butter or margarine
2 large egg whites
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 (15 oz) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 cups flour
1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Beat the sugar and butter until smooth. Mix in the egg whites, vanilla, chickpeas and chocolate chips. Add the flour, oats, baking soda and salt, mixing on low speed to form a thick dough.
Line two baking sheet with parchment. Drop dough by the tablespoonful, spacing cookies 1 inch apart. Flatten slightly with fork. Bake at 350F for 11-13 minutes.

Eat your oats - MUESLI

This column first appeared in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix.

On special occasions, my mother let us choose the breakfast cereal. This choice was made in the grocery store because the kinds of cereals we would choose were not found in our house on a regular basis. In the winter, we ate oatmeal porridge and cream of wheat. In the summer, it was wheat puffs and Corn Flakes. The cupboard was bare of anything coco-frosted-lucky-special or sporting a cartoon character on the box.

Of course, I longed for what I could not have. Special occasions, such as birthdays, were preceded by weeks of decision making. Would it be Cap’n Crunch (my all-time favourite) or Fruit Loops (my second favourite) or Frosted Flakes (a close third)? Would I eat it slowly and make it last? Or gobble it down in a few breakfasts of uncharacteristic abandon? These were weighty decisions for a 6 year old. By the time I was old enough to buy groceries, sugar cereals had lost their appeal and wheat puffs were passé. Toast became my grownup breakfast of choice.

Until that summer when I ventured to Europe under the weight of a backpack. No toaster in there. I needed a breakfast that was cold, quick, inexpensive, delicious, portable and well, European. I discovered it all in muesli. Full of oats, seeds, nuts and plump dried fruit, with no added sugar, delicious with yogurt for breakfast or by the handful as a snack. In the stores, there were many varieties and combinations of muesli to choose from; clearly, it was the breakfast of choice for many hungry Europeans. Before I flew home to Canada, I stuffed a full bag of muesli into my pack.

There was nothing quite like it in the grocery stores in Saskatoon. At some point, there began appearing processed cereals that use the word “muesli” in order to appear healthy but they were big on over-sweetened oats and stingy on the fruit. I went back to toast. Then I got the bright idea to make my own muesli. There’s nothing hard about it, just a mixture of oats, seeds, nuts and/or dried fruit. I use organic Saskatchewan ingredients as much as possible like rolled oats, flax and hemp seeds, and local apples and cherries I dried myself.

When Monika and Werner Roewekamp moved to Canada 30 years ago, they started making muesli, too. “It was something that we grew up with in Germany, but when we came to Canada we couldn’t find a muesli that we liked,” says Monika. After her friends raved about her homemade muesli, she and Werner decided to go into business. After a year of sourcing organic ingredients, many of them from Saskatchewan, and a few months of test marketing at the farmers’ market, their muesli is now for sale under the Organic2U label at health food stores and as BioStar at the local Zellers. In the New Year, they’ll bring out a muesli especially for children.
“It’s a miracle food,” says Monika, “just the way nature provided.” She can tell you all about the nutritional properties of muesli including fibre, selenium, Omega-3, amino acids and anti-cancer agents. She also says raw oats are best because cooking reduces the healthy enzymes, but I like my muesli either way.

This year, my family has decided to make Christmas presents and you can bet there’ll be some homemade muesli under the tree.

No-Nuts Muesli
3 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup hemp seeds
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup flax seeds
3 tbsp honey
3 tbsp canola oil

Mix together the oats and seeds. Stir together the honey and oil. If they are too stiff to stir, heat them in the microwave. Pour the honey/oil into the oats and mix thoroughly with your hands. Spread the mixture onto a big cookie sheet and bake at 200F for two hours, stirring now and then for even cooking. Cool on the cookie sheet. Add dried fruit of your choice. Store in an airtight container.

Off to a good start - BREAKFAST MUESLI

Who needs a cereal bowl? A martini glass really shows off a beautiful mix of muesli, fresh raspberries and yogurt. I got the idea from the spa in Moose Jaw and I've been making it at home ever since. At first, I was buying the muesli, but now I'm making my own with Saskatchewan ingredients (except the pumpkin and sunflower seeds).

Golden Flax - Tomtene Seed Farm, Birch Hills, 306-749-3230
Honey - Triple R Honey Ranch, Val Marie, 306-298-2204
Hemp seeds - The Good Seed, Birch Hills, organichempseed@gmail.com
Oats - Daybreak Scheresky mill, Estevan, http://www.daybreakschereskymill.com/

Muesli
3 cups rolled oats
½ cup sunflower seeds
½ cup hemp seeds
¼ cup pumpkin seeds
¼ cup golden flax seeds
3 tbsp honey
3 tbsp canola oil

Mix together the oats and seeds. Stir together the honey and oil. If they are too stiff to stir, heat them in the microwave. Pour the honey/oil into the oats and mix thoroughly with your hands. Spread the mixture onto a big cookie sheet and bake at 200F for about two hours, stirring now and then to prevent burning at the edges. Remove from oven and cool on cookie sheet. Store in an airtight container. I prefer to add fruit just before I eat it - fresh in summer and dried or preseved in winter. You can add your favourite dried fruit when the muesli comes out of the oven.

The first 'fruit' of summer - RHUBARB CRISP

Imagine you’re a Saskatchewan pioneer and you’ve just come through a long winter with very little fruit. The canned apples are all gone and you’re down to the last of the dried saskatoon berries. Now imagine just how happy you are to see the first of the rhubarb. Sure, rhubarb is not technically a fruit, but it sure tastes like it in rhubarb crisp, as my mom makes it.

RHUBARB CRISP
An hour or two before baking, mix together:

4 cups chopped rhubarb
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
A dash of salt (optional)

Place the rhubarb in a baking dish. I use a deep round ceramic dish because I like a thick layer of rhubarb; however, my mom uses a flatter rectangular cake pan. Sprinkle on the topping:

½ cup butter, cold
¾ cup flour
A big pinch of cinnamon
½ cup brown sugar
¾ cup rolled oats (not the quick variety)

Cut the butter into small pieces. Mix with the flour and cinnamon. Using your fingers, quickly squish the butter into the flour until there are no chunks of butter remaining. Stir in the brown sugar and oats. Place the topping loosely on top of the rhubarb. Bake at 325F for about 45 minutes. If the top is not as crisp as you would like, place it under the broiler for a minute or two. Serve on its own or with vanilla ice cream.

Ode to Rhubarb - RHUBARB MUFFIINS

I love any plant in my garden that can survive a Saskatchewan winter and spring back up in... well... spring. Rhubarb fits that bill. Even if you don’t eat it, it just looks great. Some friends were talking recently about green rhubarb. Apparently that was more common before this upstart red variety cornered the rhubarb market. Somehow, I just don’t think it would be as pleasing to eat.

My nieces were recently visiting from the metropolis of LA and I got them hooked on raw rhubarb dipped in sugar. Mmmmmm. One of my favourite ways to eat rhubarb is a Rhubarb Up-side-down Cake (see recipe at 30 May 2005), but these muffins come a close second.

RHUBARB MUFFINS
2.5 cups flour
1 t. baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups chopped rhubarb
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla

Topping:
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup rolled oats
1 tbsp melted butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Combine the flour, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Mix in the rhubarb and coat the pieces in flour. In another bowl, mix the sugar and oil. Whisk in the egg, buttermilk and vanilla. Blend this liquid mixture into the flour mixture, stirring just and until it is incorporated. Spoon the batter into a greased muffin tin. Sprinkle a bit of topping on each one. Bake at 350F. for 20-25 minutes. (It makes 18 muffins in my muffin tin.)

Newspaper - OATMEAL JAM JAMS

This article first appeared in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix newspaper on 20 March 2006.

Have you ever tried a new cookie recipe and loved it so much you made it over and over again for several weeks running? It’s quick and easy. Your family loves it. And best of all, it’s made with your favourite vegetable. I recently found just such a recipe on my doorstep in Saskatoon. Well, in the mailbox, to be exact. Somebody (and you know who you are) placed a little green cookbook in my mailbox called "Zucchini: You can never have enough."

Readers of this column may know that zucchini is my favourite summer vegetable. Strange choice, you say? Consider the versatility of the zucchini. You can eat the vegetables when they are very small or very big, and in many different ways from grilled to stir-fried. You can even eat the flowers. In the garden, it grows fast and furious whether or not you have a green thumb. Have you ever heard of a zucchini crop failure? And the flowers are so big and beautiful, I feel sunny just looking at them.

Up until now, I have tended to eat my zucchini as a vegetable and not as an ingredient in desserts. I’ve never made a chocolate zucchini cake, primarily because grating zucchini seemed such a tedious task. All that changed with this little cookbook. It arrived in February at a crucial moment – I had just discovered one large green zucchini still in storage in the basement.
This zucchini was picked last fall and had obviously escaped detection in the garden for a long time because it was really, really big. Perhaps it was the sheer size that helped preserve it all these months.

The flesh was a bit soft and had passed its prime as a vegetable, but I hated to throw it out (ie: compost it). As it turns out, it was perfect for grating. The recipe I choose was Zucchini-Oatmeal Cookies, which were so good I made several batches before that zucchini expired. With ingredients like oats, honey and zucchini, it was perfect for my Saskatchewan-only diet. For the past year, my husband and I have been trying to eat nothing but Saskatchewan-made foods in our own home.

Our Saskatchewan desserts have included cherry pie, carrot cake, oatmeal jam jams, bread pudding, berry cobbler and rhubarb upside-down skillet cake (the recipe for which was included in this column last May. You can look it up at homefordinner.blogspot.com). Although we are eating a Saskatchewan diet, we do permit ourselves some "foreign" ingredients like sugar, raisins and cinnamon for a mostly-Saskatchewan recipe.

Our friends and family often help us along with gifts of Saskatchewan foods that have included venison, moose, fish, apples, wild rice, fruit preserves, potatoes and honey. Usually I know our benefactors, but this little cookbook remains a mystery. I would like to share the recipe for Zucchini-Oatmeal Cookies but it would be inappropriate to print it here without permission from the author, John Butler. I’m sure his book is in the stores.

Instead, here is the recipe for my Grandma Jo’s Oatmeal Jam Jams. I used organic rolled oats from the Daybreak-Scheresky Mill at Estevan and filled them with a thick preserve of lingonberries (better known here as wild cranberries) made by a friend.

Oatmeal Jam-Jams
2 cups flour
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup soft butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup sour milk (mix 1 1/2 tsp vinegar with milk to make 1/2 cup, stir, sit 5 min.)

Grandma’s instructions simply say, "Roll these." To elaborate, mix everything together, form it into two balls, wrap it in plastic and place it in the fridge to cool down.

Using a floured counter and a rolling pin, roll each ball of dough to a thickness of 1/8 inch (1/3 cm). Cut out circles with a cookie cutter or a glass.

Bake on a cookie sheet for 8-9 minutes at 350 degrees.

Transfer the hot cookies to a rack to cool. Spread a dollop of jam or preserves on one cookie and press another cookie on top. These cookies are crisp when they come out of the oven but the filling will soften them up.

Source - Daybreak-Scheresky Mill

Ray and Marianne Aspinall are doing something quite unique on their farm south of Estevan. They have an old stone mill where they grind all sorts of grains into wonderful organic flours.

The Aspinalls have been farming organically since the 1980s, but they wanted to get more value for their products. Even at premium organic rates, farmers get the short end of the stick (or the price tag) when they truck raw food off their farm to be processed somewhere else.

A few years ago, the Aspinalls made a deal with retired farmer Alvin Scheresky. For four decades, Scheresky ran a successful organic food business from his farm, shipping his grains to health food stores across the country. But he wanted to retire. The Aspinalls bought his mill and his customer list and revived the business. They also bought Alvin’s seed varieties, some of which date back to Europe and were brought to Canada with the settlers.

In respect to Alvin, and in recognition of his brand appeal, they added his name to that of their farm, to create the Daybreak-Scheresky Mill. Now, the Aspinalls are cleaning and milling organic grains for mail order and for sale in health food stores. They grow many of their own grains (including wheat, millet and buckwheat) and they also purchase from other local organic farmers.

I visited the Scheresky farm in May and left with 10kg bags of whole wheat flour, rolled oats and pearl barley. You can reach the Aspinalls at (306) 927-2695, or see their entire product list at www.daybreakschereskymill.com.