Broccoli Barley Bowl

Day 361

Broccoli Barley Bowl 

Appetizer: Pancakes

On Monday I made pancakes from scratch and discovered a recipe worth keeping so I thought I'd post it here for the record, so we can always find it. I'll probably put it in my Favorite Recipes blog as well.

Pancake

Over the years, we've tried several pancake recipes, but we always come back to, "It's no better than the mix" so we generally save ourselves the hassle and buy the "just add water" mixes. However, Monday I wanted to make pancakes to go with the vegan bacon I bought and found that we were out of pancake mix. Since it was Thanksgiving Day and everything was closed, I just looked a recipe up and happened on the best pancake recipe we've ever tried. Thanks Pete!

Today, Laura waited too long to eat and was too hungry to wait for real supper and made a 1/2 batch of these to tide her (us) over. So we each had a pancake about 2 hours before real supper.

Now for the broccoli barley bowls.

Broccoli Barley Bowl

Original recipe

I like barley; it's one of my favorite grains. I found this recipe online by googling barley recipes. Laur harvested the last of the broccoli tonight - and the third harvest, in fact - so this one grabbed my attention and I decided to try it. We had everything on hand except for feta, and while I was out grabbing some I got a can of chick peas to move things along a bit faster because all we had here were dried ones.

Ingredients

2 cups cooked barley

2 cups broccoli, steamed

1/2 cup chick peas (canned)

1/4 cup sunflower seeds

1/2 cup feta

Dressing, feta, sunflower seeds, chickpeas

Dressing

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp maple syrup

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/8 tsp sea salt

It takes about 40 minutes to cook barley to the tenderness I like, so that's the part that took that longest. I started cooking it before heading to Sobey's.

Barley simmering

How to Cook Barley

1 part barley : 2 parts water

Simmer 40 minutes.

While the barley was cooking, I steamed the broccoli and measured out the chickpeas and sunflower seeds. I mixed up the dressing. When the barley was cooked, everything was combined together and served in bowls.

Broccoli Barley

Reviews/Comments

This was quite yummy. It was exactly like mac & cheese but with a different taste and different texture. Just kidding, haha. It seriously was tasty and all the flavors were good together. It was sort of nutty and cheesy, but also had that lemon pepper dressing. It doesn't sound like a good mix, but it worked. It was also really filling. The pic at the top of the page was my bowl and I was stuffed and couldn't finish it. That could have had something to do with the appetizer, too, I suppose. I rate the broccoli barley bowl an 8.

Laura gives it a "solid 8.5".