Dumplings!

I’m trying a new recipe tonight. That’s not unusual for me, but I am experimenting with grains. I do a lot with vegetables, but have always stuck with wheat and rice. Every once in a while I feel bold and will put barley in my vegetable soup. Tonight I am making barley with broccoli and white beans. Sounds a little bland, but I’m hoping when it all cooks up we’ll have a new dish to add to our menus. I seem to go through phases where I cook the same 20 things over and over and over again. It’s hard to set aside some of our all time favorites to try something new. I do pretty good picking out recipes that end up tasting good, but I still have failures. It’s nice to have a sense of humor when sitting down at the table. I’ll never forget my first attempt at no-chicken and dumplings. (We use soy curls in place of the chicken and McKay’s seasoning for the “chicken” broth.) I should have paid more attention to the dumpling recipe. It looked a lot like my biscuit recipe, but with a lot more liquid. It was a REAL mess trying to form dumplings out of really wet dough. We ended up with little “matza ball” looking dumplings. The dumplings were….well, they just weren’t quite dumplings. My children were so gracious, telling me how great it was. Perhaps they were just trying to get an extra helping of dessert that night. We’re trying that dish again this Sunday night, and I plan to have an extra special dessert on hand just in case!