Category Archives: food

Granola Bars

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Originally inspired by smittenkitchen in the summer of 2010, these are perhaps the ultimate flexible recipe.  Not only does it use up the little ends of things you’ve been stashing around your cupboards to use up God-knows-when, but it also produces the perfect we’ve-packed-EVERYTHING-and-have-nothing-to-eat food!  2013-05-09 15.02.35

3 1/2 cups oats

2/3 cup flour (oat flour, all-purpose, whole-wheat, almond…  you could even use ground flax)

4-6 cups of filling (dried fruit, chocolate chips, nuts, seeds, coconut, etc)

1 teaspoon of salt

1/2-1 teaspoon cinnamon

3/4 cup oil or butter or smart balance (whatever’s lying around) – melted if in a solid state

2/3 cup peanutbutter (or not!  this time, i used a few tablespoons of nutella, for fun)

3/4 cup liquid sweetener (agave, honey, corn syrup–or a combination of these, can also substitute some–but not all! (you need the liquid)–for granulated sugar)

I usually combine the dry ingredients, and then pour the wet ingredients over the top and combine.  Spread the mixture in a well-greased (and preferably, parchment-lined) 9×13″ pan.  Wet your hands, and then press the mixture so that it’s very compacted–it will bake together better this way.  Bake at 350 degrees (F) for about 40 minutes (till a bit brown around the edges).  Let cool before lifting out of the pan and cutting.

These recipes have been somewhat a departure for the blog–what do you think?  Is there room on the internet for more recipes?

Pumpkin (or Banana, or Sweet Potato…) Bread

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Continuing the Clean-It-Out recipe march, today is a super-flexible quickbread recipe (see PB Bonbons and tomorrow, granola bars!).  Based on a recipe from my dear Classics professor in college (the type who called tests “Opportunities” …for his students to show him their abilities–his recipe prowess was much more appreciated than his sense of humor).

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3 1/2 cups flour (any mix of whole wheat, oat, almond, or all-purpose flour that you need to use up…)

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg (plus some  allspice, and/or cloves–whatever you need to use up, or whatever strikes you for the fruit flesh you’re using)

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 cup butter, melted (or oil, or margarine, or smart balance…)

2 cups canned pumpkin (or a whole can, or one-to-two large roasted sweet potato(es), or three-to-four large bananas)

1 teaspoon vanilla

4 eggs, beaten

2/3 cup water

3 cups sugar

Combine wet ingredients + sugar in one bowl, and dry ingredients in another bowl (this particular loaf used 3 eggs and 1/4 cup ground flax, because I had a lot of that to use up,too). Gently fold the wet ingredients into the dry, then pour into either 1 bundt pan, or two loaf pans (or two round cake pans, maybe?).  As you can see, this batch *also* had a good helping of walnuts; you could add coconut (i wasn’t bold enough–i didn’t know if the flavors would work out), or chocolate chips, or raisins or dried cranberries…

bake at 350 degrees (F) for 75 minutes.

 

PB Bonbons

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This recipe and the next two are inspired by my effort to clear out the cupboards as we prepare to move back East this month.  These recipes are super flexible; you can use whatever is in your cupboard that you don’t really want to pack up in yet another box…2013-05-09 15.03.31

Three ingredients, a blank canvas for creativity, and it only requires a microwave!

a block of cream cheese (non-negotiable)

about 8oz of chocolate (bars, chips, white, dark, almond bark–anything)

a whole package of sandwich cookies (nutterbutters, oreos, vanilla sandwich cookies… or graham crackers with some nutella thrown in, or shortbread cookies)

Melt the chocolate over a double boiler or in the microwave–this will be the candy coating; if you’ve got any kind of baking bar, or many kinds of chips, just about anything will work.  If you’ve got some vegetable oil or butter to use up, add a tablespoon or two–it’s not necessary, but it does make the coating a little softer on the candy.

Use a food processor or a plastic bag and rolling pin to crush the cookies–totally pulverize them.  Mix the powder into the cream cheese (if using a food processor, you can just add it to the bowl–in chunks will probably work best to completely combine the cheese & cookie powder).  Shape the dough into small balls–about a tablespoon in volume–and put them on a cookie sheet in the fridge to firm up a bit before dipping them in the chocolate coating.

If you want to add toppings–the end of a bag of crushed nuts, or a bit of coconut, or, in my case, some colored sugar, all the better!

Which combination would YOU want to make?

Clean-It-Out Recipes

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Last year, when we moved from North Carolina to St. Louis, I didn’t make any particular effort to pare down my kitchen staples before we moved.  I figured that we packed it all up on a Monday, and by Thursday, it was in our new kitchen, we weren’t down any of our “usual” ingredients, and in the scheme of things, who cared if there were two more boxes?

Well, our move turned into a three-storage-unit (in two different locations!), six-week, several-thousand-dollar debacle, and I have decided to take the cupboard clean-out more seriously this time.

So, I have three recipes with flexible, short ingredient lists that I’ve made this week to provide some normalcy to the time of packing and purging, as well as to use up the ends and dregs of various kitchen supplies.  Enjoy!

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Peanutbutter Bon Bons

Pumpkin Bread

Granola Bars

the changing tide of recipes

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2012-11-01 08.39.41popping up recently on pinterest: lots of “just one cookie” or “just two cupcakes” recipes. How is our eating changing such that we have never needed or wanted this sort of recipe before? I’ve seen some of these photo-recipes with captions like, “I live alone, so this is PERFECT!”–that’s one reason–more people are living alone today than in the past; people used to live with their siblings or their parents or have their grandparents live with them, and now, instead, we’re all living by ourselves. There’s no one with whom to share the batch of cookies or cupcakes, so we make just one or two.

I wonder if we have always eaten so many sweets. I didn’t grow up in a house that had baked goods or sweets just lying around. A box of cookies was a big treat, as was birthday cake. Pies were never seen, and dinner had no regular connection with dessert. I suspect that sugar and butter used to be less-regular items on our recipe pages and shopping lists–foodstuffs have become much less expensive in the last decades, and perhaps that’s another reason we may eat more sweets: enjoying them is not nearly the financial obstacle it used to be.

If we didn’t always used to eat so many sweets, then we probably only ate them on celebratory occasions, going out to dinner, having a party, gathering people together for a birthday or anniversary–times when we’d have a whole bunch of people who could polish off a platter of cookies or a whole cake.

A very wise woman (who lives alone) observed to me this week, “It’s all about eating together, isn’t it?”