Food, Family, Friday: Edamame and Whole Grains

I really wanted to title this post “The Courtship of Eddie’s Mommy.”  But, I wimped out and went for the title that would be more useful for search engines.

“The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” was a late 1960s TV show starring Bill Bixby as a hip and happening widower with an inquisitive young son named Eddie.  The core of the show involved sweet, insightful heart to heart discussions between a father and son bonding in a changing world.  Presumably, it has never been remade because no one can figure out how to turn that into a Charlie Sheen sitcom. 

The show lasted several seasons until one day on the set Bill Bixby turned into The Incredible Hulk and threw young Eddie into the ocean prompting Iron Man to buy the studio and shut down production.

OK, so that’s not quite what happened, but it would be one way to update the show, am I right?

And let's be clear to note that while these videos have been on Youtube for some time, they are no doubt copyrighted by fine upstanding organizations who recognize the value of keeping something they have already paid for in circulation.

However, this post is about Eddie’s Mommy, or edamame if you prefer but no one in this house can ever say it that way.  Seems there is a penchant for cheap jokes around here and I can’t imagine where it comes from.

The existence of edamame is one of God’s reminders that there is no excuse for not eating healthy.  They are shucked soybeans that are cheap, highly nutritious, tasty, go into anything and come in a bag that will shove open the freezer door and leap across the kitchen into the microwave without any human intervention.  People, it doesn’t get any easier.

This recipe also uses my super duper Asian Sunbutter Sauce.  Sunbutter is made from crushed sunflower seed kernels and offers more flavor than peanut butter, which we don’t use around here because of a peanut allergy in the family.  Let's give a shout out to Red River Commodities and SunGold Foods for producing a great product.

Like most quick sauces, the proportions can be varied for taste preferences or desired effect.  Here, I make it a little looser, with less sunbutter and more soy sauce, than I do in other applications.

Edamame and Whole Grains

1 16 oz. bag frozen edamame, cooked as bag instructs (obey your bag!)

~ 3 cups whole grains, cooked (we used brown rice, wild rice and millet - yes, millet!)

~ 1 pound mushrooms, chopped

2 medium zucchini, chopped (I chopped them into matchsticks to vary textures)

1 medium yellow squash, chopped (I did a yellow one just for color, add another zucchini if yellow isn’t your thing)

½ a large onion, chopped

Asian Sunbutter Sauce

~ 1/3 cup of good soy sauce (if acid is listed as an ingredient, buy a different one)

2-3 splashes of apple cider vinegar

1 splash of rice wine vinegar

couple squirts of honey

1 heaping tbsp. of sunbutter

Couple cloves of garlic, minced

~ a man's thumbnail sized chunk of ginger, minced

For this dish, you should end up with about ¾ cup of total sauce volume.  Feel free to play around with the proportions of the sauce.  Don’t skimp on the apple cider vinegar though.

Put your cooked grains into a serving bowl big enough to toss together all ingredients.

Stir fry the mushrooms in batches and put them in with the grains.  Do the same with the onions, zucchini and yellow squash mixing some of each per batch.

Carefully open the edamame bag as there will be steam.  Drain them first in case there is too much liquid in the bag.  Add them with everything else.

You should have a heaping dish at this point.  Toss things together a bit.  Then add your sauce in stages.  Mix further after each addition of sauce.  The whole dish should end up a bit moist, but you don’t want it wet.

Serve and have a heart to heart discussion around the table about The Incredible Hulk.