Wednesday, May 26, 2010

My Crummy Ideas

You know when you get to the end of a box of cereal and all you have left are the crumbs?  What do you do with those crumbs?  Throw them out, right? Well, if you're me, you carefully sift them through a colandar and save them in a ziplock...because they are a great source of homemade breadcrumbs!


It all started back when my brother and I were trying to perfect my black bean and turkey burger recipe. They were way too mushy, and I knew I needed breadcrumbs but just could not bring myself to use commercial breadcrumbs made with inferior ingredients.  Then one day, as I was tossing out an empty box of flax flakes (to which I add pure raisins for my own version of raisin bran), I saw the crumbs. 
Eureka!

I sifted the larger cereal pieces and put the finer crumbs into a ziplock, stashing them in the pantry with a small flutter of excitement at my breakthrough.  The next time I made a batch of turkey black bean burgers, I stirred in a quarter cup of my crumbs.  Perfect!  I felt very smug and bragged to my brother about my discovery. 

He wasn't outwardly impressed.  He, a gourmet-foodie with far more culinary talent than I, thinks my cooking and eating ways are nutso.  But as a 6-foot tall twenty-something soccer player he also has the metabolism to justify that opinion.

Anyway, a couple days ago my darling little boy sweetly asked if it would be too much trouble for me to make him some oatmeal for breakfast.  Okay, it didn't go quite like that but regardless, I stirred in some of my magic flax breadcrumbs into his oatmeal, too.  He scarfed it down in minutes as I stood by, beaming. *cue the angels singing and bestowing me with "Miss Healthy Well-Balanced Meals" sash and tiara*

The next day, applesauce waffles....with a little crunch.

So the next time you start to toss out those crumbs, think again - they're a great way to add some healthy fiber to recipes that may (or may not) call for breadcrumbs.  Just don't tell my brother. :)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You left out that your brother is super handsome too. Super super handsome... that's just my incredibly biased opinion, but whatever!

p.s. he told me that your black bean burgers are good... so, while he may not have shown his appreciation for them as much as you'd have liked outwardly, he liked them enough to tell me about them!