Bean Flour in Cookies and other Experiments

Yesterday Ellery was begging for pumpkin cookies. They are by far her favorite. We had a few minutes so we decided to whip them up. In my freezer I only had about 2 1/2 cups of flour left over. I didn't have time to grind any so improvisation took over. To replace 1 1/2 cups of whole grain flour I pulled out some wheat germ, oat bran, and white bean flour.

Wheat germ is really high in Vitamin E and oat bran adds lots of fiber. The white bean flour I made by grinding white beans in my nutrimill. I make a big batch and then freeze it. I pull it out and add in small quantities whenever I remember. Adding a bean flour completes the wheat protein. Now we could successfully live off of pumpkin cookies. Perfect.

I won't go back to 4 cups of my regular flour blend. I will update the recipe on the blog. The results were amazing! Delicious cookies with even more healthy benefits. I also used 1 1/2 cups barley malt syrup and 1/2 c honey. I love pumpkin...it is so forgiving and so healthy. I don't feel bad for a second when my kids go crazy over these!

On Sunday night I made my whole grain bread and decided to grind 3 cups of amaranth and 1 cup quinoa with my other grains to add. The results...

Brent: This bread tastes like weeds.

That was being nice. It is so gross I am trying to decide what to do with it. I don't think any of us can stomach it. Even Emmett throws it as far as he can across the kitchen. But it is so hard to throw away 4 loaves of bread and 20 cinnamon rolls... Anybody like the taste of weeds? I've got just the thing for you in my freezer!
It was the amaranth that was the killer. I have added this whole and popped and it is great. Grinding it into a flour was far to over powering, even when combined with 12 cups of other grain flours. Oh well. Now I know!

BTW...Notice all of Bessie in there? (Bessie is what I named my parents cow they slaughtered and we later purchased 1/3 of...my mom thinks I am sick and twisted to name the cow, hey I'm not eating it!) She is packed in my inside freezer too. What am I ever going to do with all that beef? Especially since we only do meat 1x a week now. That means beef about once every 3 weeks or so. Food Storage I guess.