This vegan and grain free Instant Pot salad combines chewy wild rice and tender sweet potato with grapes and clementines in a lemony herb dressing. Perfect for summer alongside grilled meats or for fall alongside baked meatloaf.
I have meaningful work and it's an amazing thing to be able to write that statement.
What does this have to do with the Instant Pot Fruited Wild Rice and Sweet Potato Salad recipe I'm sharing today? The short version is that I discovered the dressing I'm using in this salad (I've got a DIY version, too, see the Note below) via my work with Minnesota Central Kitchen turning rescued/donated ingredients into meals for hungry people in the Twin Cities area.
If that's enough for you please feel free to scroll on down to the recipe.
Egg bites flavored with parmesan cheese and peppers, brightly colored thanks to fresh spinach. These vegetarian snacks pack a protein punch--straight from the Instant Pot!
Green Eggs No Ham! Use the electric pressure cooker to make these colorful tasty protein bites any time of year--not just for Dr Seuss' birthday breakfast!
I like to offer recipes for a variety of eaters, so after I developed my Sous Vide Sausage Egg Bites I was thinking about vegetarian options. I tried a couple of recipes and methods before settling on this one. First I used mozzarella, and then feta, but I wanted a stronger flavor so I ended up with parmesan.
These sweet muffins are packed with fruit--pineapple--and vegetable--sweet potato which add depth and character to a tender breakfast treat. Topped with maple sugar for crunch, this muffin is an all around satisfying snack.
Welcome to Muffin Monday! I've been having so much fun baking muffins for the Detachment that I'm bringing a new one for you this month--a sweet potato muffin with pineapple in the batter.
The inspiration for this muffin came from the growers of these Stokes purple sweet potatoes--Frieda's. My first exposure to purple sweet potatoes came via the Mile Creek Farm Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. I had so much fun combining orange and purple sweet potatoes in my Overnight Sweet Potato Monkey Bread and playing with the vivid colors to make my Mardi Gras Braided Bread that I searched all over my new city until I located some purple sweet potatoes at my local natural foods coop.
This one pot Instant Pot meal combines bacon, blue cheese, and mushrooms in a satisfying meatloaf cooked alongside sweet potatoes. If you like a bacon, blue cheese and mushroom burger, you'll like this meatloaf!
I feel like I should put that out there since you can see packaging materials in my photos. When I bought the first package of this ground beef with pork & bacon blend I thought it would be terrific in a meatloaf--and easy to make do if you cannot find the same product. After all, many grocery stores sell a "meatloaf mix" or "meatball mix" which has ground beef and ground pork. I've never seen one with bacon before, though, which is what caught my eye.
Simon is giving the food the side-eye. I think he knows he's not getting any.
When I read further on the packaging--small batch, local, got their start selling at farmer's markets, donate 1 meal for every package sold--well, I was sold. So I'm happy to share with you what brand of ground meat product I'm using--MightySparkFood--just know that I'm sharing because I like the product I purchased, not because the company is aware I exist and asked me to develop this recipe.
[Using my best How to Speak Minnesotan] So, the recipe, then. When I developed my Turkey Meatloaf with Wild Rice recipe and Feta for my Instant Pot Basics cooking class, I did so because I'd wanted to use this product but I had a student who did not eat pork. [I've made that recipe 4 times in the past 2 months and apparently never bothered to grab a camera during the process. Stay tuned, the 5th time is the charm.]
When I make an assortment of cookies, such as for a holiday cookie tray, I like to have a variety of tastes. Consider these as the Rules of a Cookie Tray. There should always be something chocolate. There should always be something not chocolate. There should always be a bar cookie. There should always be Peanut Butter Blossoms. And most important--all of these cookies should be easy to make since you're making so many of them at once.
I got this recipe from my friend Lasar back when we lived in Hawaii. She called them Tasty Raspberry Treats and that's how I always think of them. Since I try and make my post titles a wee bit more descriptive, however, I've renamed them Raspberry Jam Oatmeal Bars because if you're looking for a way to use your homemade jam, this is a lovely one.
My mother's recipe for lefse--the soft potato flatbread beloved by Norwegians and their descendants at home and abroad. This recipe uses potato flakes for an easy, smooth dough.
We sat amazed as Mother worked the dough. Could her palms sense when it became too warm? Within those hands a shape began to grow. Rolled out, it moved towards its proper form.
She sprinkled flour as she rolled them out. The rolling pin moved lightly in her hands. She turned each lefse over and about, As swirling worlds take shape when God commands.
First rolled up on a stick, and then unrolled; The cookstove added age-spots to each side. Once done, they were removed for us to fold; A simple task that we performed with pride.
Each bite one takes can recreate this mood; What we call "lefse" is not merely food.
This poem appeared in the February, 1989 issue of the Sons of Norway Viking.
I'm sharing my mother's lefse recipe today because, more than any other food, lefse represents a Norwegian Christmas to me. I want to leave a record of this recipe for my children in the technology available to me today.
If you know lefse, then you probably get it. Unlike other traditional Norwegian foods, [cough lutefisk cough] lefse doesn't seem to divide people. It is universally loved. Who doesn't like a tender flat potato bread, spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar? For me, only dark brown sugar will do but I'll bend enough to add a shaker of cinnamon sugar to my Christmas Eve smorgasbord for those weirdos who may prefer it. You savory lefse eaters . . . well, keep on being you.
The reason that I'm sharing my mom's lefse recipe and not just pointing you to Alanna's cousin LeAnne's excellent video tutorial (found here) is simple. My mom's way is different than what LeAnne does, and I want to be authentic to my mom's recipe.
It's a funny thing, the concept of authenticity. What makes a recipe authentic? Is it the way you or yours learned it or the way the most popular chef of the time chose to make it? In a FB food blogger group we recently had a lively discussion about authenticity and tradition as they relate to recipes. [Can a carbonara sauce be a carbonara sauce if you choose to use pig belly not pig cheek? I'm not going to touch that debate, but I'll happily eat a plate of whichever meat is used in the carbonara you prepare for me.]
My mother learned how to make lefse when she was a county extension agent in Minnesota in the 1950s. Her office was in the Pennington county courthouse, and she had a demo kitchen complete with multiple ovens and an overhead mirror. One of her functions was to prep the 4H kids who were doing demos at the fair. [The county fair was very early in the season, before the produce was ripe for showing/preserving, so they did all sorts of demos instead.]
Early one summer Doris Belanger won a blue ribbon making lefse at the county fair. That meant she'd be taking her lefse demo to the state fair at the end of the summer. In order to help polish her demo, my mom first had to learn from Doris how to make lefse. [I guess this isn't even my mom's lefse method, it's at least Doris's mom's mom's method.]
Doris taught my mom, and all summer long the 4H leader and mom met with Doris while she practiced. They gave tips on how to improve her presentation. At the state fair, Doris won a blue ribbon. She was comfortable and relaxed while making lefse, and her picture even appeared in the Twin Cities paper! In thanks, Doris's grandpa made my mom a grooved rolling pin on his lathe, and Doris's mom took a slat from an apple crate and carved a lefse turning stick which we call a spuda [spoo-duh--I don't know how to spell this].
See one, do one, teach one.
My mom demonstrated this method during Scandinavian Week at the 1976 Bicentennial Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife on the National Mall in Washington, DC. If you know lefse, you get it, and tourists in the crowd who knew lefse would crowd around after each session, chatting and enjoying samples.
Mom has even appeared on Norwegian TV in a program about how Norwegian Americans celebrate Christmas. Now it's my turn to demo this method, this time using the internet. I'm still using my mom and her equipment, though.
mixing up a batch of dough
shaping before rolling
failure is always an option--and a tasty one too
This video shows my mom making the first piece of a batch of lefse. She rolls out the dough until we can see the pastry cloth markings through it which is how we ensure it's thin enough. Then she checks to make sure it's not bigger than the paper towel it will cool on. Finally she rolls it up on the spuda and carries it to the griddle.
Once she's sure the griddle is very hot, she unrolls the lefse onto it. [Mom knows her griddle heats evenly and doesn't need to spin the lefse for even cooking.] After the lefse is blistered on one side, she flips it over and cooks the other side. Then she picks up the lefse and walks back to the paper towel, realizing on the way that we need a new location for the finished stack so we're not walking all over the kitchen while doing the lefse dance. It's kind of a cardio exercise.
Potato Lefse (Recipe from Marjory Olsen Olson)
This recipe was developed in a university agricultural research facility in Crookston, Minnesota in the 1970s. Crookston is in the Red River Valley where potatoes are harvested and processed into instant potato flakes.
Note: This recipe requires chilling the dough before rolling it out. If I'm planning to cook the lefse in the morning, I'll mix up the dough the night before and leave it in the fridge to chill overnight. If I'm planning to cook in the afternoon, I'll mix up the dough while I'm having my morning cuppa and chill it until I'm ready to cook. You'll need several flat surfaces--to roll out the dough, to cook the lefse, and to hold the cooked lefse until you're all finished. Once you set everything up (and have flour all over the kitchen) you might as well keep on going until you've used up all the dough.
My Mother's Lefse
By Kirsten Olson Madaus
A recipe for the soft potato flatbread beloved by Norwegians and their descendants at home and abroad. This recipe uses potato flakes for an easy, smooth dough. Total time does not include chilling the dough, but does include cooking all the pieces of lefse.
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Yield: 15 pieces
Ingredients:
2 cups water 3 Tablespoons vegetable shortening 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter 2 teaspoons salt ½ cup milk 2 cups potato flakes (mom & I use Hungry Jack--bang the measuring cup on the counter to settle the flakes) ¼ teaspoon baking powder 1 Tablespoon sugar 1½ cups unbleached all purpose flour plus more for dusting the . . . well, everything
Instructions:
In a 3 quart pot bring water to boil (or use a large oven safe bowl and microwave on full power for 3 minutes), remove from heat and stir in shortening, butter, salt, milk, potato flakes, baking powder and sugar.
Cool to room temperature. (If I'm planning to cook in the morning, I'll start this the night before and let it chill in the fridge overnight. If I'm planning to cook in the afternoon I'll mix up the potatoes in the morning and let them chill until I'm ready to cook.)
Transfer 1 cup of this potato mixture into a medium bowl (keep the rest refrigerated until ready to use--which can be another day or two). With your hand, work in ½ cup of flour.
Divide into 5 equal portions. On a flour-dusted pastry board and with a flour dusted grooved rolling pin, roll each portion to dinner plate size and as thinly as possible. [On a Foley pastry frame, we roll until we can see the markings through the lefse.]
Bake on a very hot griddle (around 400 degrees Fahrenheit), flipping once, until flecked with brown. Total cooking time will be 60 to 90 seconds. It's quick.
Lay each piece on a paper towel and cover with another paper towel forming a stack.
Once all the balls of lefse dough have been cooked, cover the stack with a kitchen towel while they cool.
Fold and place on a serving tray once cool. Cover them with plastic wrap to keep from drying out.
Serve at room temperature, spread with butter and dark brown or cinnamon sugar.
I know other folks' traditional recipes start with whole potatoes. For more recipes using potatoes, please see my Potato Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.
Sweet and spicy, this gluten free condiment is terrific on a leftover turkey sandwich. The bright color makes a lovely edible gift during the holiday season.
I have a confession and an apology. Apology first. When I shared the Cranberry Chicken Swiss Chard Leek Enchiladas I was unaware that one of the ingredients I used, cranberry salsa, was not always available. I'm sorry.
Now for the confession--I often work ahead, posting recipes made up to a year in advance. See, I'm slow as the molasses in my cold kitchen in the wintertime. If I were to get recipes written, photographed and typed and published in order I'd be sharing tomato recipes in November, pumpkin recipes in January, and butternut squash recipes in April.
Nobody wants that--not even the folks Down Under?! Instead of missing the seasons by a mile, I opt to save posts until they are seasonally ripe. I've got some flexibility that way, so I can toss in a Beef and Venison Sloppy Joe recipe or a Slow Cooker Apple Chai for a crowd when the spirit moves me [and I'm asked].
Most of the time this method--of working ahead and taking my time, works fine. Sometimes I screw up. Royally. In this case I tried to find the same brand of cranberry salsa in the store and even contacted Ocean Spray only to learn that they don't make cranberry salsa each year. Instead of just saying 'oh well, you're on your own', I grabbed a bag of cranberries from my freezer stash and some hot peppers from my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share and made a batch.
If you've ever made cranberry sauce from the bag of berries, you can make cranberry salsa. It's just boiling and stirring, after all. If your cranberry sauce involves opening a can from both ends, let's talk and explore your options.
I canned this cranberry salsa. In fact I've canned so many things that my shelf support broke! Luckily the shelf fell onto the jars of salsa verde and Cantina Style Strawberry Salsa, so nothing slid to the floor. Although I did get 7 jars to fill up my canner, I did have a wee bit left over and it has been in my fridge for 2 weeks and tastes delicious. I'll bet it's good for at least 2-3 weeks in the fridge, and that's plenty long for Thanksgiving turkey sandwich leftovers. That means you don't have to process this before using.
Salad greens from the farm share and kohlrabi pickles make this sandwich amazing.
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