Hi Everyone,
Wow, what a weather change. Remember yesterday when I was complaining on how hot it was? Well today, was rain and 62 degrees. Crazy weather! How do you go from 97 to 62 over night? I’m happy it rained though, that way I didn’t have to water my garden. Plus it’s Monday and I was at work anyway, so let it rain now and be nice for the weekend.
Today is the first day of the debut of Skinny Bitch Tuesday! Now what is Skinny Bitch Tuesday? Skinny Bitch is a cookbook by Kim Barnouin. She is a vegan, cook, a nutritionist, and a mom. Now I’m not a Vegan, but I don’t mind having meatless meals. Heck, I love all food, vegan, vegetarian, meat, sweet, carby, you name it, I like it! 🙂 The Skinny Bitch Club was created by Claire from Realistic Nutritionist and Kelly from Eat Yourself Skinny. I’m very happy to be apart of this group with these lovely ladies. What we are doing is making the same recipe from the cookbook, adapting it to our needs or following the recipe. This weeks recipe is Wild Rice with Pine Nuts, Currants and Caramelized Onions.
I know I would love the recipe in the book, but I had to change it up a bit to appeal to my picky Husband. I also cut the recipe in half since it was the two of us. My big changes were using one kind of rice, using cherries instead of currants, olive oil in place of grapeseed oil and no nuts. I know what did I do to keep it the same? The rest of it is the same.
I love the idea of cooking rice in vegetable broth, it adds so much extra flavor to the dish. The reason I used cherries instead of currants is because of my Mom. My Mom you’re wondering? This is going to sound so stupid, but remember back in the 70’s and early 80’s when the big thing were turtlenecks with the fruit, dogs, frogs, flowers ect.. printed all over them? Looking back now, gosh, were they ugly. What were they thinking? And why did we wear them? My Mom had one with cherries on it, and the name brand was Currants. Up until a few years ago I always thought currants were cherries. Not even close! Funny how our brain works that way, I was like 8 – 10 years old when she had that turtleneck. By the way I now know what currants are, but I have no idea what they actually are. Are they an olive? I don’t know? Tell me what exactly is a current? I should Google it.
In the recipe I chose not to use pine nuts, and considered walnuts, but I found Trader Joe’s Wild Black Rice to be chewy and I just didn’t think nuts would have worked out so well. Plus my Husband is not a fan of nuts in food. He weird! However, I didn’t think he would like this dish at all, because he doesn’t believe in fruit in a dinner dish and he’s not big on wild rice and you know what he liked it! He actually went for seconds, which shocked me!!
The best way to describe this dish is sweet and savory. I really loved the caramelized onions and the fresh cherries added a hint of sweetness to it. All in all I give this dish two thumbs up!! You should really try the recipe. It’s a perfect side dish with a meal. I served it with a pork tenderloin.
- ½ cup Wild Rice
- 2 Cups Vegetable Broth
- ¼ cup onion, diced
- 2 tsp. garlic, minced
- ⅓ cup cherries, fresh, pitted, chopped
- 1 Tbsp. parsley, fresh
- In a medium sauce pan, bring vegetable broth to a boil. Add rice and bring to second boil. Cover rice, and simmer on low for 40 minutes until broth is evaporated. Fluff with fork.
- Meanwhile in a skillet, heat the olive oil, add the onion, cook for about 5 minutes until tender, add garlic, saute for about another 30 seconds. Add cherries and cook until cherries are warmed about another 2 minutes.
- In a bowl add cherry mixture and rice. Fold in parsley.
Adapted from Skinny Bitch Cookbook
I want to introduce you to the other ladies in the Skinny Bitch Tuesday Club.
Claire from the Realistic Nutritionist
Kelly from Eat Yourself Skinny
Michelle from The Healthy Bites
Stephanie from Eat.Drink.Love
Be sure to stop by these wonderful ladies blogs to check out there spin on the Wild Rice with Pine Nuts, Currants and Caramalized Onions. I can’t wait to see what they came up with.
Oh and sending out big Hugs to Kelly!! She wasn’t able to participate in this weeks recipe because she is feeling under the weather. Hope you get better soon Kelly!!
See you tomorrow! Have a great day!
Jennifer
P.S. I promise tomorrow won’t be a cherry dish!
Strawberry Chicken Salad
Chocolate Banana Snack Cake (One Pan)
Caramelized Herb Roasted Carrots
Creamy Butternut Squash Soup (Vegan) / Winner of GO Veggie!!
Good morning Jennifer! A currant is a small seedless raisin mostly grown in CA. Should be really easy to find them since you’re in CA and maybe have a sample, maybe your farmers market has them. You’re rice dish sounds so yummy, I love rice but what is the difference between black rice and wild rice? Do you think this could be made with like Jasmine rice or would the flavor be totally different? I had wild rice like one time in my life and I didn’t care for it but that was along time ago and my taste buds are changing daily these days! Since I’ve turned 55 all kinds of things are going on strangely in my body! The joys of getting old!! I love pine nuts so I will keep those in the recipe.
I can’t to make this dish!! Also I ran across a 15 year old teenager on here from Mumbi India and she just started a blog on cooking and baking. Would you please check her out, the fb page is
Had no idea a current is a raisin. Thank you for telling me. I’ll be honest with you, I am not the most knowlegable person when it comes to rice. My rice was a black wild rice, which I found to be chewy. It’s nothing like regular brown rice, where that is more fluffy, and light. I have had Basamati rice and I love that rice. I haven’t had Jasmine rice yet, but next time I go to Trader Joe’s (Saturday) I’m going to buy it. Maybe I’ll have a rice taste off, and make a few different kinds and give my description of it. Because honestly I don’t know to much info on rice. I’ll check out the Facebook page.
Hey understand about the body changing, mine is doing crazy things to and I’m in my mid 30’s. 🙂
Good morning Jennifer! A currant is a small seedless raisin mostly grown in CA. Should be really easy to find them since you’re in CA and maybe have a sample, maybe your farmers market has them. You’re rice dish sounds so yummy, I love rice but what is the difference between black rice and wild rice? Do you think this could be made with like Jasmine rice or would the flavor be totally different? I had wild rice like one time in my life and I didn’t care for it but that was along time ago and my taste buds are changing daily these days! Since I’ve turned 55 all kinds of things are going on strangely in my body! The joys of getting old!! I love pine nuts so I will keep those in the recipe.
I can’t wait to make this dish!! Also I ran across a 15 year old teenager on here from Mumbi India and she just started a blog on cooking and baking. Would you please check her out, the fb page is Flour Bakery Season and maybe give her a like? Thanks so much and have a super duper day!!
Amy
I love wild rice, the chewiness is great to me. Have you tried cooking rice in coconut milk? If you like coconut, I bet that would go great in this recipe. Thanks for the good post!
Oh I have cooked rice in coconut milk before and I love it! Matter in fact I am going to make it again with a few added twists! 🙂
I love that you used cherries instead of currants!! Your pilaf looks perfect! I love how different all of our recipes are!
Hi Stephanie! I love your dish using quinoa, that is just perfect!! I know I can’t believe how different everyon’es recipes are. I tried to leave a comment on your blog, but for some reason, some blogs it doesn’t let me leave one. I hate that!!
This is so wonderful! I love these kinds of recipe groups. This looks amazing!
Thanks Cassie! I love these kinds of groups too, I love to see the different spins everyone puts on the recipes.
What a really cool recipe group. I am going to have to look for that cook book also. Your presentation is beautiful and I love the cherrie addition. sounds delicious.
Thanks Suzi! Just click on my link at the top for the cookbook. I found Amazon has the best prices on books. It’s a really great cookbook too, whether your a vegan or meat eater!
Loving the sweet and salty combo! And then the sweetness of the caramelized onions to pull it together. I bet that golden raisins would be really great in here too. Looking forward to the next Skinny Bitch Tuesday recipe!
Your right, golden raisins would be good in the is dish! Next time for sure!! The next recipe for Skinny Bitch Tuesday is a good one, can’t wait to make it and try it out. Have a great night!
I love the cherries in this! It was in the 60’s in Ohio here today and I absolutely loved it 🙂
Ohh, 60’s are a little cool. It hit 70 today and it would of been nice if we didn’t have wind!
I love wild rice! This looks like such a great recipe. I have so many cherries in my fridge right now that this is just the perfect way to use some of them!
Going to make your recipe tonight to go with grilled salmon. It sounds wonderful. However, we love nuts in everything, so I think we will add back some nuts. Also – currants, although like raisins, are not raisins. They are a type of berry that is dried and eaten in things like raisins. Not a big deal, unless someone cannot eat grapes for some reason and have to stay away from raisins. Currants are something I have often seen in British scones. Thanks for the lovely recipe idea!!
Ohhh, the raisins in the dish sound great and adding more nuts is a wonderful idea!! Hope you like it!!! This will be a great side to go with your Salmon. Love Salmon, wish my Husband did and he’s a fisherman!