Happy Healthy New Year with Bob's Red Mill & California Olive Ranch

The Virtual Potluck group is teaming up with Bob's Red Mill (BRM) and California Olive Ranch (COR) during the month of January to demonstrate how easy it is to incorporate olive oil and whole grains into your meals making every course a healthier one.

Both BRM & COR seem to be great companies passionate about their products and where they originate from.  You can read more about them here and here.

Our first challenge is to create an appetizer featuring BRM Hard White Whole Wheat Flour and COR Arbequina extra virgin olive oil.   I love bruschetta type appetizers....fresh grilled bread topped with varying flavors...you can't go wrong.    So I adapted my standard bread recipe to incorporate the BRM Whole Wheat Flour and came up with a delicious tasting "good for me" bread.  I topped it with pesto that I made using the fresh fruity flavored Arbequina oil, some oven roasted tomatoes and fresh Buffalo mozzarella.  The result was amazing.

Want to win the grain and oil of the week?   Visit  COR on Facebook and retrieve this week's Virtual Potluck code word.  Then come back here or to any of the other VP pages and leave a comment using that word. Contest ends midnight EST on 1/8/2012

For an extra entry you can follow VP on twitter and tweet about this contest using the #virtualpotluck hashtag and leave a comment here letting me know.

You can get additional entries by visiting our host blog for this event and look for the list of participating bloggers; leaving comments on their pages will get you an entry.


Whole Wheat Caprese Bruschetta 

Whole Wheat Bread
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 cups milk

1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher or other coarse salt

5 T COR Arbequina olive oil
6 1/2 cups BRM Hard White Whole Wheat Flour
Cornmeal for the pizza peel

And then, you know the drill. Mix with a spoon in a food-safe bucket, let it rise at room temperature for 2 to 5 hours. Shape and let raise for about 1 hour

Preheat oven to 350 along with your baking stone if using, and pour 1-2C water into a metal pan at the bottom of the oven. Bake 40 mins.

Pesto

1 1/2 cups COR Arbequina olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cloves garlic
6 tablespoons freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
6 cups fresh basil leaves

Mix everything in a food processor until desired consistency.

Oven Roasted Tomato

12 Plum tomatoes cut length wise

1/2 cup COR Arbequina olive oil

sugar

Preheat the oven to 200°F.

In a large bowl, toss the tomatoes with 1/2 cup of COR and salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle with sugar. Place cut side down on a small baking sheet and bake for about 2 hours, or until the tomatoes are softened.

Putting it all together:

Grill slices of bread drizzle with some COR oil.  Top with oven roasted tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella and drizzle with pesto.