Tidbit Tuesday - Blueberry Brown Bread

~ Blueberry Brown Bread ~

Lately, I've had a hankering for brown bread, even before Penny sent the poem below. Here's my recipe:

Brown Bread

1 cups white flour

1.5 cups wheat flour
one half cup toasted wheat germ

1 tsp baking soda

one half teaspoon salt

1 cup whole buttermilk

1 cup dark molasses

one half cup dried fruit – pineapple, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, raisins, etc.

one half cup nuts – pecans, walnuts or mix of the two, although I like pecans better

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and oil a loaf bread pan.

Combine dry ingredients and mix well with wet ingredients, batter will be very stiff.

Add fruit and nuts; we don't like raisins so I use other dried fruit, as desired.

Bake about 55 to 60 minutes or until done when checked with a toothpick.

Let bread stand for ten minutes then turn out to cool almost completely.

Serve warm bread with salty butter and home made jam or cream cheese. Care to guess which I suggest? Yeah, bread is supposed to be cooled thoroughly but I don't visit that world much less live there. What's the use of baking fresh bread if you can't break the "rule" and eat it warm? No use at all, I say!

This morning I used frozen blueberries and the bread was delicious! Just a touch of sweetness, thanks to the molasses, and a lot of heft, thanks to the whole wheat and toasted wheat germ. I like a bread that's sturdy, brown and filled with goodness and this recipe fits the bill more than quite nicely. Try it and let me know what you think.

By the way, if you use fresh fruit, dust the fruit with a bit of white sugar or flour. That keeps the fruit from sinking to the bottom as it bakes. This morning, the frozen blueberries were added at the last stir, into a very stiff batter and that kept them in place throughout the batter. 

Perhaps you've guessed, I cook by touch, taste and my eyes. I think I've been cooking so long, 45 years now as well as I enjoy reading cookbooks for pleasure, that cooking is, mostly, intuitive. Even baking which is supposed to be more "keeping to the letter of the recipe" than stove top cooking. Food is forgiving and mistakes, generally, can always be salvaged. If the above recipe hadn't worked for me, I'd have sliced and toasted it then served it with sweetened whipped cream and fresh blueberries. YUM! There's always a way...

~ my latest treasure ~

I mentioned I visited Aunt Esther last week; we always go "downtown" for lunch. After lunch, we visited the old 5 and Dime which is also now an antique shop. For years, Dave has listened to me harp on how I'd love to find an old tractor seat and turn it into a stool. Many decades ago, I had an old commercial milk bucket but, along the way, someone nipped it. Anyway, at the 5 and Dime I found the above...a tractor seat attached to an old commercial milk bucket, and, in my favorite farm colors, John Deere green and yellow! As they say, SCORE!  As I say, thank you, Father; I love it!

Penny sent the following poem; does it speak to you in simple and quiet joy? It does to me!

I Have Found Such Joy

"I have found such joy in simple things;
A plain clean room , a nut-brown loaf of bread,
A cup of milk, a kettle as it sings,
The shelter of a roof above my head,
And in a leaf-laced square along a floor,
Where yellow sunlight glimmers through a door.

I have found such joys in things that fill
My quiet days: a curtain's blowing grace,
A potted plant upon my window sill,
A rose fresh-cut and placed within a vase,
A table cleared, a lamp beside a chair,
And books I long have loved beside me there."

~ Grace Noll Crowell ~ 

And, from Ethel Romig Fuller comes Proof

"I have spread wet linen

On lavender bushes,

I have swept rose petals

From a garden walk.

I have labeled jars of raspberry jam,

I have baked a sunshine cake;

I have embroidered a yellow duck

On a small blue frock.

I have polished andirons,

Dusted the highboy,

Cut sweet peas for a black bowl,

Wound the tall clock,

Pleated a lace ruffle…

To-day

I have lived a poem."

and finally...

“...when the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, 'Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.'”

~ Virginia Woolf ~

 ~ 3 monkeys in front of my studio ~

With love, from Thistle Cove Farm, where we live a poem each and every day; bless His name!

Blessings ~ poetry ~ poets ~ brown bread ~ home churned butter ~ home made jam ~ JOY ~