When the pre-launch prep is moving this quickly, Sunday becomes a very active day. It was a very exciting day, actually. But I'll tell you about that after I tell you about this dish.During my travels over the years, I occasionally got to eat in cafes attached to a health food store. One of the staples of those cafes was a simple dish of brown rice with steamed veggies. The veggies would vary by season and all were fresh.
One of the exciting things today was our delight as we discovered our rice cooker can handle decent sized batches of short grain brown rice. That WAS a concern.
The veggies are yellow onion, patty pan squash, portabella mushrooms & red bell pepper. That basket was FULL to the top before I steamed them. I always had thought that the dish sounded really bland, but when you bite into the sweetness of the bell pepper, the squash or the onion and then the woodsy savory of the portabella-- well, YUM. Not being a vegan myself, I dolloped a nice hunk of fresh butter. Optional, of course. The rice has just the right amount of a nutty tinge to its flavor slide. Jon has deemed this one of his all time favorite dishes to eat anytime, anywhere.I have had a person or two ask me if I ever make any cooking goofs. Oh yeah... Just because I have the cajones to write about my cooking doesn't make me immune to goofs. Just ask Jon. He'll tell you there have been plenty over the years. Fortunately they are more infrequent the longer and more often I cook. But just today... I was making some sprouted sunflower, whole wheat bread. Man! something got way off and it was very dry and dense-- not at all like my whole wheat bread I made 2 days ago which was fairly light, nice texture, nice crust-- good for sandwiches. This MIGHT work for croutons or maybe stuffing. Definitely not sandwich making. Just more reason to experiment before deciding on a final plan.
In the realm of sandwiches here is my immediate plan-- Wait. Please understand that this is ALL subject to refinement. We'll be working to deliver to you what you most want to be served. We THINK we have a pretty good idea for a starting point. But that is just to get the door open. After that, we expect you to give us feedback and help us determine our path. If I thought for a minute that what you wanted was the same old, same ole I wouldn't be even making an effort to forge this path. While it is exciting to be stepping out in unchartered territory for West Plains, it is very scary. We don't have a lot of wiggle room in our finances. We really HAVE to make this work. But the feedback we've gotten thus far has been totally exciting and I am jazzed beyond belief.
Back to that sandwich plan--
We will have 2 groups of sandwiches. The first will be "build your own" using ingredients you choose. This may not seem very different from Subway and Quiznos until you find out that we are making our breads from scratch each day. Sour dough white, real whole wheat, rye and if I can get it right, a sprouted bread of some sort. I'll be making one specialty loaf a week, as well. Also, we'll be using local organics whenever they are available, farm fresh eggs for our egg salad, and as simply processed deli meats as we can find. We'll tell you when an ingredient has nitrates. Our chicken salad will be from the chickens used to make our stocks and broths. And our list of additional ingredients will exceed other place's options. We'll have fresh sprouts-- alfalfa, spicy sprouts and even lentil sprouts, avocado and, be still, my heart... artichoke hearts. Our tomatoes will be locally grown for as late into the year as we can get them.
The second group of sandwiches will be signature ones that have cohesive taste directions. I'm still working on which ones, but an example might be a gyro on pita with tatziki sauce, tomatoes, onions and feta. I'm figuring we'll start with three varieties and build from there.
Tomorrow I'll tell you more about our salads...and the shopping I did today. Oh Yeah!
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