Grabbing for Granola — TWD

I live in a small town. We have about 14,000 people. We live outside of town about 7 miles. I like living in a small town. Low Crime Rate. Good Schools. Nice neighbors. There is only one small problem. It is not a good place to find some common foods. Yeah, sure, there is plenty of catfish, lots of crawfish, and and even a good bakery across the river. But there is NO GRANOLA IN THIS TOWN. There are no health food stores. We are across the river from a town with about 46,000 people. And guess what - yup!!! NO GRANOLA!!!! WHAT’S A MOTHER/BAKER TO DO??? Make your own I guess. So that is what I did. Scoured the net and bloggers to find a good granola recipe. Found one. Actually I found several - one from Smitten Kitchen. Another from Kathy Nichols and one from fellow TWD blogger Nancy at The Dogs Eat the Crumbs. Something interesting, they are all about the same. Since I had never made granola before I didn’t have the slightest idea of what to put in it. Now I Do!!!

Fresh Granola!

And it is so much better than commercial ( I would imagine, even tho’ I never could find any….)Again, no recipe as they are at the links above. Main thing is - put in it what you like as long as you stick to the basics. I did.

So why did I need granola. Well, I could say it was a good healthy snack, I was tired of commercial granola cereal, I was bored….. but that wouldn’t be right. I needed it for this weeks TWD - Granola Grabbers. OOOHHH!!!! Chosen by Michelle of Bad Girl Baking. These are good! And healthy. And most of the ingredients that are in the cookie were already in the granola so they were really good - and easy!. I actually tried several ideas from the bloggers who were asking some questions. HoneyB tried them with Great Grains Cereal and said it worked. Amy used some chocolate chips.

Chocolate and White chips

And Holly used M and M’s.

Colorful Grabbers

You are my kind of lady… All great ideas and all added an extra level of flavor.

Great Study Snack!!

Your ideas helped make my Grabbers great. And the best thing about these cookies — they are never the same twice because of the granola. Different recipe — Different cookie. Thanks, Dorie!!

 

One Potato, Two Potato…..

Thanks to two fellow bloggers I tried something new with potatoes last night with supper. Originally these appeared on The Pioneer Woman Cooks. But I found it via Terri at A Daily ObsessionThey are called Hot Crashed Potatoes.I won’t put the recipe here as both of the links above have the recipe. But this is how mine looked.

Crashed Hot Potatoes

I used a little parsley and butter on mine as it was late and I didn’t feel like going thru’ all my spices. PW used fresh rosemary and Terri used chives (looks like…). But you could use any herb, herb/mix and it would be good. One tip. Use small new potatoes. Mine were larger and didn’t press quite as well.

AND FOR DESSERT…..

BANANA ICE CREAM………

Yummy! What do do with some of those really ripe bananas you have sitting on your counter. Too ripe for cereal. Too hot to make banana bread. ICE CREAM!!!!! This recipe from Alton Brown. Sprinkled with little granola. Voila!!!

I scream....

 

Rainy Day Marinara

I looked out at a cloudy, drizzly, damp day this morning and thought, “Fantastic!!!”. No, I am not crazy, but here in the Deep South in August we don’t get much rain (unless there is a Hurricane). And it has dropped the temperature by about 20 degrees. Only 75 out right now and it is 2:20 P.M. Those of you in the South know how unusual this is.

It is also a perfect day to cook something for a long time….. I have tons of tomatoes.

@ 5 pounds

(Yes, that is a a BEATLE mug hiding behind the scales! Yes! I am a child of the 60’s and still an ardent Beatle Fan. Yes, I did see them on Ed Sullivan while crying my eyes out and hugging my George Pillow!) Lots of empty jars. Oceans of Olive Oil. Pounds of onions and garlic. Plenty of time. Eureka!!! Marinara Sauce!!!! I haven’t made it in quite some time and I know my old recipe was not very good tasteless . Unfortunately I didn’t find that out until after I had put up four quarts of the stuff. After 3 years, I still have some….. So after perusing the internet for just the right recipe I decided there isn’t just ONE right recipe. None of them are the same. Emeril says, Alton says, Recipezaar says, Martha says…… Roma tomatoes, plum tomatoes, tomatoes….with onion, no onion, with fresh basil, dried basil. EVOO, reg OO…. It was enough to make one’s eyes spin and heads cross. Wait, switch that!!! Get the picture. What’s a girl to do? Simple solution, look at all the recipes and come up with one you really like. The ingredients are basically all the same, just the proportions are different.

mis en place (...sounds better than 'ingredients'...!)

Well, maybe the glass of Diet Soda (name changed to protect the innocent brand) isn’t an ingredient, but it is an absolute necessity when I cook/bake/read/drive/teach. So while I list the amounts here, you can play around with them until you get the flavor you really like, like I did.

Marinara Sauce

4 Tbl Olive Oil
5 pounds peeled, cored, sliced FRESH tomatoes


Same 5 pounds!!

(this is 15 to 20 depending on the size)
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 onions, chopped
4 Tbl sun dried tomatoes, chopped
1/4 tsp sugar
1 Tbl dried Oregano
Pinch dried Basil (Or 10 fresh leaves)
S and P to taste

In a deep 10-inch frying pan (or deep dutch oven) heat the olive oil. Saute onions and garlic until translucent - about 5 minutes. Add in oregano and basil and saute about 1 minute longer. (None of the recipes said to do this, but I have found it opens up the flavor of the herbs.) Add tomatoes and sugar. Simmer until thickened, stirring occasionally, about 1 hour.

fini

Season to taste with salt and pepper. (Makes about 2 quarts.)

bright red goodness - four on left.

Some alternatives for you: use Italian seasoning instead of the oregano and basil. Decrease/Increase the onions, garlic. It is all up to your taste buds.

Now instead of using store-bought for your Eggplant Parmesan, or Pasta Primavera, you have your own and with no preservatives, etc.

P.S. It is rather messy,

Juicy Tomatoes

so you might want to put a towel/newspaper under the board (which I thought about after the fact) DUH!!!

Pretty!!

Pretty Ugly!!!

And not all tomatoes are pretty…

In Addition……
While I was waiting for the sauce to cook I used those leftover blueberries from TWD -

Very Blue Batter

Which my guys ate before I could take a picture. They WERE pretty!

Bread & Butter!

And some used cukes from the garden.

 

The Color Purple

I never saw a PURPLE cow
I hope I never see one,
But I can tell you this right now:
I’d rather see than be one.

Ogden Nash

“When I am an old woman I shall wear

PURPLE, With a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me, And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves, And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter”

Jenny Joseph

With that said, I have to admit PURPLE is one color that definitely catches one’s attention. Nothing prettier than a field of

PURPLE flowers.

PURPLE Heart.

Deep PURPLE. . Wait, they’re not PURPLE!!! Oh, maybe they are!

One more beautiful Purple thing - Dorie’s Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream!

Purplicious!

This was this week’s TWD challenge. And it was a thing of beauty. Usually I do things by the book. It works out better that way. But this time I didn’t have everything I needed, so….. Instead of Heavy Cream I used Half and Half. And then I found out I didn’t have enough of that so I used a little less Sour Cream (some of the TWDers said there was too much of a sour cream taste) and made up the difference for all with Plain Yogurt. It came out just right. A good Blue Berry flavor with just the right amount of tartness. Purplicious!!!Thanks to Dolores of Chronicles in Culinary Curiosity for this week’s pick. It was cool!

I almost didn’t have any pics to show. It seems my computer and my camera have had an argument and are not speaking to each other anymore. So, what do I do now. What’s the fun of doing all the ‘baking’ if there are no pictures. Walgreen’s seemed to be the only answer. Went there, put the card in the machine — NOTHING!!!. Again, I tried. Still NOTHING. “Excuse me,” said I politely to the photo lab lady, “this machine cannot access my pictures.” Seems that machine didn’t read cards and the machine that did, well it wasn’t working at all. Out of Walgreens and over to CVS. Their machine was working so I got prints of the lovely purple ice cream, scanned them and finally got them into the blog. Ah, the things we do for ‘baking’ glory. Still good, no, great ice cream.

 

A Touch of India

There is one thing you need to know about me - aside from the fact that I do love to bake, adore baking/eating scones with tea, and have a beautiful chair potato dog - I am absolutely addicted to Indian food, East Indian that is. (Now I do love American Indian goodies as well - it’s the Anthropologist in me!) I often make curry - red and yellow - for me and my son (Hubby not a fan). I find small out of the way restaurants when I can - they usually have the best most authentic cuisine. Unfortunately, there are NO Indian restaurants in my city (Lots of Chinese and Catfish Shacks here in the South). I did find a small one in Shreveport, LA., that serves a small buffet lunch during the week. Whenever I go see Mom/Dad I try to find time to go. I have a friend from Punjab whose mother is a fantastic cook and I have learned quite a bit from her. She makes her own Curry Powder which is outstanding and so much better than the commercial types (Although the last time I was in Dallas and visited their fantastic produce market there was a couple there selling their curry powder. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, tho’.)
Anyway, I have wanted to try Naan Bread for some time to go with curry next time (Fall) I make it. I found several sites on the net. One is Manjula’s Kitchen and she has videos which make it nice. Also found a great info site FoodLorists with some interesting history about the bread itself. I then remembered I had an Indian Cookbook from ages ago from the Time-Life Series. That was the recipe I picked. Most of the recipes online used yeast. I don’t have any (too much baking lately) and this one uses Baking Powder and Baking Soda instead.
Naan Bread(Easier to pic rather than type!)

Naan Dough

Little doughs all in a row...

Rolled and ready to bake/

The recipe in the little book called for baking. But looking in Paul Hollywood’s 100 Great Breads
he actually ‘fried’ his in a little olive oil in a hot pan.

Browned in skillet

The baked breads rose rather like a pita while the ‘fried’ were more like a very thick pancake.

Fried in back, baked in front

Both were good, just different textures. They were good, but I think next time I will add some spice - garlic, curry, sesame seeds - to enhance the flavor.

 

“Loafing” around with Dorie…

There is nothing more comforting than a loaf of bread, unless it is a sweet loaf of goodness. That is what the TWD challenge was this time. A sweet loaf of goodness. More specifically - Black and White Banana Loaf. Easy to make, pretty to look at, and exceptionally easy to eat! Which my family did, quickly.

Black and White Loaf

Fresh out of the oven still warm and soft. Too warm/soft to slice so I just satisfied my desire by looking. While we wait for it to cool, let’s talk about marbling. The best way to do it is by dividing your batter into two batches - in this case plain and w/chocolate. Then drop large dollops into your loaf plan randomly. Run the blade of a case knife thru the batter carefully. Don’t want to blend too much or you just end up with a mish-mosh of batter with no marbled pattern. That said, it is easy to do.

Okay, it’s cooled off now…(Sorry, little blurred. Mine came out with more of the chocolate layer on the bottom rather than mixed throughout. But, as some of you have pointed out, it is the taste that counts. And it is (was) tasty.

We do have a little freedom with the recipes. So, what didn’t I have. Well, rum for one. Didn’t really want to buy a whole bottle for this one recipe, so used Rum Flavoring instead. You get the flavor of the rum without the alcohol . Recipe called for 1 Tbl Dark Rum, so I used the equivalent of the flavoring. Should have used just a tad more. Also, I really don’t care for bittersweet chocolate and I had some Ibarra chocolate from Mexico I wanted to try, so I did. Ibarra is a sweet chocolate with a touch of cinnamon. It worked out just fine. There are 6 ‘tablets’ of chocolate in each box and each is 3.1 ounces. Recipe called for 3 ounces, so it was close enough. It is not as dark as bittersweet so that batter was not as dark as the original. But I liked the cinnamon flavoring with the rum and the bananas.

Looking forward to the next TWD challenge.

 

Pounds of Pears

August is one of the hottest months for Louisiana. It is also the month to harvest pears. With two trees full I do have some goals this summer.

Goal #1 - actually pick some pears this year
Goal #2 - can some pears this year
Goal #3 - bake with these pears - galette, pie, cakes

Yesterday before it got tooooo hot (actually got to 101 —- AGAIN) I picked a large bucket of pears. I will probably do that a couple of times in the next few days. So Goal #1 has been met. The hardest part of canning pears is the peeling. They are not easy to peel.

Canned Pears

I did put up 4 quarts before my thumbs wore out. So much for Goal #2. Only one left is to bake with the pears. That will have to wait until I finish my TWD challenge. That rustic fruit galette from last week’s TWD will be good with those home canned pears.
(NB: when you are cutting up the fruit - pears, apples, peaches, etc - they tend to brown easily. If you don’t have something like Fruit Fresh, you can crush up about 5 Vitamin C tablets in a gallon of water and store your fruit in that as you peel.)

 

Dorie’s in my Kitchen (I Wish!!)

Another Baking adventure with TWD. This time a Summer Fruit Galette. chosen by Michelle of Michelle in Colorado Springs. What fruits are in season - nectarines, peaches, pears (almost), apples (always) plus or minus a few more depending on where you live. We missed our peaches while we were on vacation (Blue Ridge Blues) - all ten of them fell to the ground. But the birds enjoyed them. The pears are not quite ripe yet - except the ones on the very TOP of the tree which I cannot reach. With that being reality baking with fresh fruit meant a trip to the store. I would like to say Farmer’s Market, but here in Central Louisiana the idea has not quite caught on yet. Baton Rouge, yes! New Orleans, yes! Shreveport, yes! But not here!!! That has to change.
But I digress. So off to the store. The peaches came with bugs, so I settled on nectarines. Peach preserves to bring out the flavor. And the result….. (DRUM ROLL PLEASE) TA DA!!!!

Summer Fruit Galette

Okay, so it ain’t pretty. Pie crust and I just don’t seem to get along very well. And this was no exception. But rather than focusing on the ‘crust’ (said with a slight sarcasm) pay attention to the rich fruity colors of the reddish nectarines, the bright summer yellow of the custard.

Galette Side

Close your eyes and focus on the layers of flavor brought on by the slight sweetness of the preserves, the tarty sweetness of the nectarines, and the extra layer of texture of the crushed graham crackers. UUUMMMM!!!!!

Thanks, Dorie, for another baking adventure. It was fun. And next time my crust will behave!

P.S. There is only one little thing that would make this even better - a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream. Guess it is back to the kitchen for me!

P.S.S. Yeah, I was right. Ice Cream!!!!

 

Toooo HOT to cook….

So, what do you do when it is 101 outside (again) and you really want to make something sweet.

You find a no-cook recipe, that’s what!!!

I recently acquired a few new cookbooks (Mom moved and could not keep all of them, good for me, sad for her…). Anyway, one of them was the Red Hatter’s Cookbook This is not a cookbook I was going to keep, but after I read thru’ it - allll of it - I found it has some great recipes. This is one of them.

Corn Flake No-Bakes

1 cup white corn syrup
1 cup sugar
2 cups peanut Butter
4 cups fresh corn flakes (FRESH!!)

Bring the corn syrup and sugar to a boil in a large saucepan. Boil for one minute, stirring constantly so not to scorch. Remove from heat. Stir in the peanut butter then the corn flakes. Drop by teaspoons or tablespoons onto a cool surface. Hide cookies from the family!!! (I usually put mine in the fridge to cool them and keep them crunchy. 36 - 48 cookies.

I have now made these two days in a row. “Hey, these are really good!!” says hubby. ( And since I got 50 cookies from one batch, they aren’t THAT high in sugar….yeah! Right!)

 

Bread and Eggplant

BREAD….

I feel ssssoooooo much better. I did have a little time to bake, cheated, but baked. Bread!!! I love home made bread, but didn’t have time to do the oven thing. Bread machines can be a real life saver. So that is what I did - baked bread the easy way.

Fresh Bread

This is a good basic, sort of sweet tasting bread. Great with a little butter, plain fresh out of the oven (DUH!!) or with a little jam/jelly.

White Bread

1 1/2 cups water
4 1/2 cups bread flour
3 Tbl sugar
2 Tbl dry milk
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbl butter
package yeast

Select basic setting. Add ingredients to the machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. After baking remove from pan and place on rack to cool. Cool to room temp before slicing. (Yeah! Right!)

I never seem to have powdered milk on hand, so I just use 1 1/2 cups milk instead of the water and powdered milk. Works well for me.

… and EGGPLANT

This year we planted something a little different. Instead of the the big purple Bonnie Bell eggplant, we tried the white variety. It is quite good. The eggplant is a nice medium size and the skin seems to be more tender than the big purple or Japanese eggplant.It can be used anyway you would use the purple. Stuff it, fry it, saute it, etc. I sliced mine very thin, seasoned, dipped in cornmeal/flour, and fried in little canola like chips. They fry very quickly, so watch them closely. Good!!

And one more thing.

We are finally getting tomatoes. Remember we planted late because of the wedding (Terri - this pic’s for you)

Bride and Groom

Now the ‘maters are coming in — lots and lots and lots — will be ripe soon. Guess I will have to make marinara and stewed tomatoes. The big ones are what are called 4 -4 and the little is the grape tomato. Wish I liked raw tomatoes, but I like them every other way.