Bon Appetit

Bryan made an amazing dinner tonight that I don't want to lose, especially because we want to make it again. He emailed the sauce components to me so he would remember what he'd added.

Sauté half a diced onion and 2 diced bell peppers in canola oil until cooked. Add two 12 oz kielbasa sausages, sliced into one inch pieces. Cook until the sausage is browned. Transfer onions, peppers, and sausage into a warming dish. To the drippings in the pan add:

• 1/2 cup OJ
• 1/2 cup cider
• 3 pinches salt
• 1/2 TBSP Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 TBSP yellow mustard
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 3 tbsp brown sugar

Cook sauce until it reduces. Add onions, peppers, and sausages into sauce. Toss to coat. Serve over rice or egg noodles.

We went the egg noodle route because it was quicker than rice. It was delicious!

A Place for the Important Stuff

Many years ago, in the early days of the blog, I decided to post my favorite pumpkin cookie/muffin recipe. I still used the original recipe from the cookbook I had taken with me to college, but it was fun to have it on the blog as well.

I discovered recently that a page was torn from that old cookbook. It's well-loved and well-worn, so it wasn't surprising. What was surprising was that the missing page held the beloved pumpkin cookie recipe. I had completely forgotten that I'd recorded the recipe digitally and simply mourned the loss of future pumpkin cookies. It wasn't until last Saturday night when I needed to make a snack to share with the ward choir that the thought jumped into my brain that maybe I still had it. I did a quick keyword search of the blog and there it was!

It's just one more reason I'm thankful for this digital journal.

When the Food Stars Align

Sometimes, I'm a genius.

Last night the time for dinner was quickly approaching. I hadn't been able to get to the grocery store this week, so, in spite of my habit of keeping a stocked pantry, we were running low on some kitchen staples. That meant the two plans I'd had in mind for a meal wouldn't work.

I rummaged through the big freezer in the basement and found a bag of breaded chicken tenders that I'd forgotten about. Huzzah, protein found! But what to pair it with? I saw a partial bag of red potatoes and thought roasted red potatoes and onions sounded good, so I carried them back upstairs. It was while walking to the kitchen that I discovered the potatoes were no longer viable as a food source for humans as they had begun feeding another life-form from the fungus family.

Awesome.

Okay, what else goes with chicken tenders? Pasta salad! I had some tomatoes that needed to be used, so I searched the internet for a recipe. Nothing caught my eye. I moved to my collection of cookbooks. Still nothing about pasta salad for the ingredients I had on hand.

Time was ticking away.

I checked the tiny freezer attached to the fridge and found stir fry vegetables. Well, that would probably be weird with the chicken tenders, but I pulled them out anyway.

Back to the cookbooks, I finally found something that I hadn't been looking for, but still looked interesting. And that's when inspiration struck.

I made Pioneer Woman's Simple Sesame Noodles, but I doubled the sauce and cooked a whole pound of noodles instead of just the called for twelve ounces. I also subbed Tabasco sauce because I have never purchased Hot Chili Oil and therefore had none in my kitchen. I used some of the sauce to saute six cups of the stir fry veggies. When they were done, I added them to the now cooked and dressed noodles. Then I cut up several of the hot-from-the-oven chicken tenders and cooked them for a few minutes in the same pan that I'd just pulled the vegetables from, adding some additional sauce.

It was amazing. I thought the breaded chicken would be an odd addition, but it soaked up the sauce and was so good. The purpose of this post is really so that I have a record of this meal and can replicate it again. The kids all loved it and asked that I put it into their lunches for tomorrow.

Did I say I'm a genius sometimes? Well, that may be true, but in this case I think I just got really lucky.

The Curry

Remember my goal of learning to make Thai food this year? I made Yellow Curry! Wait, let me try that again. I MADE YELLOW CURRY!!!

Bryan and I don't get to have many dates, but the few that we have usually involve Thai food. More specifically, they involve Yellow Curry. I love Thai food, but of all the Thai food I've tried, Yellow Curry is my favorite. It's a delectable combination of savory and sweet with just a hint of heat. It is one of my favorite foods.

The day before Cooper's baptism I attempted the much dreamed of food. Since he was in town and also loves to cook, my brother Jordan helped me make the Yellow Curry Paste (with only two Thai peppers instead of the suggested five to twenty), then I followed the recipe for Yellow Curry.

Mostly.

It smelled perfect and I was eager to taste it. And when I finally did, I was kind of disappointed.

Our company was sweet and said it was good, but it was lacking...something. As I was wallowing in the self-pity of an unfulfilled recipe dream, I realized something. I had left out an ingredient! It called for a few tablespoons of brown sugar, but it was optional, so I left it out. I jumped out of my seat and added that special sugar into the pot.

And guess what? The mediocre meal became magnificent.

I have more paste waiting in the freezer and am eagerly anticipating making it again.

Cookie Lady

Tonight I attended a Relief Society activity for our ward. I was tasked with providing the dessert and told to keep it simple. After much deliberation I decided to make cookies, because you can't get much simpler than that, right?

Except I didn't want to just make one kind of cookie. What if I made chocolate, but several people didn't like chocolate? So I made four kinds. Of course.

I thought through this enough to realize I couldn't make all the cookies in one day. Monday night I mixed one batch, Tuesday a second, then the final two on Wednesday. It wasn't until Wednesday night that I remembered something important: I only have one oven. I stayed up into the wee hours of Thursday baking, then spent the majority of Thursday's daylight hours baking.

When I finally turned off the oven this is what I had:

From left to right: 

Coconut Macaroons, Cake Batter Cookies, Pumpkin Chocolate Chip, Double Chocolate Chunk

The kids LOVED the Cake Batter cookies, the chocolate and the pumpkin were tied for second, then the Coconut Macaroons "smelled delicious, but didn't taste all that good," at least according to Phoebe. The Relief Society sisters on the other hand, LOVED the Coconut Macaroons and only sort of liked the Cake Batter cookies.

Did I mention only half the people that were invited actually came? We have A LOT of cookies left over!

National Homemade Bread Day

The first recipe I ever posted on this blog was back in September of 2008. In the six years since I first posted it, I've tinkered with that recipe, so much so that I thought it was time to update my original instructions. Today is National Homemade Bread Day, and that seems like the perfect time to share The Bread again.

The Bread

Ingredients:

• 5 cups warm water
• 3 Tbsp instant yeast
• 2/3 cup oil (canola, olive, or coconut all work great)
• 2/3 cup honey
• 2 Tbsp salt
• 12 cups flour (I use 4 cups wheat and 8 cups white) 

1. Get a really, really big bowl.
2. Briefly mix together water, yeast, and a spoonful of the honey. Let it stand about 15 minutes, or until the yeast has puffed-up.
3. Add the oil.
4. Add the rest of the honey. (I pour it into the same cup that I used for the oil. The honey slides right out.)
5. Add the salt. 
6. Add the flour. 
7. Stick your clean hands directly into the mixture and combine ingredients.
8. When you're done kneading, place the bowl of dough, covered with a towel, on your counter. Let it rise for at least 30 minutes.
9. After it's risen, punch it down and form it into loaves. I get 4 loaves from each batch.
10. Place dough into greased bread pans.
11. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
12. Once in the pans, let bread rise again until the top of the dough reaches the top edge of the pan.
13. Bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees.
14. Enjoy!

Crunchy

I found a fantastic granola bar recipe! I am really excited about how these turned out. I used Pioneer Woman's recipe, with a few minor alterations.

• I didn't have any almonds and only a few pecans, so I used 1/4 cup pecans in place of the almonds and 1/2 cup walnuts instead of the pecans. 
• My molasses smelled terrible (it always smells terrible, but this was extra bad) and I didn't want to drag all the kids to the store for just one ingredient, so I used agave instead. 
• I don't think I used a whole cup of brown sugar. Yes, I did use some, but I use it so seldom that my supply has formed itself into a few large sugar rocks. I picked up the smallest rock and melted it down. It may have been about a cup, but I think it was smaller.

The kids love them. They're reminiscent of Nature Valley granola bars, but not quite that crunchy. The next batch I make will have some kind of fruit in it, maybe coconut and Crainsins. And I think I'll use coconut oil instead of canola.

All the Trimmings

After twelve years of marriage, today we are having our first Thanksgiving on our own. We live too far away from family to spend the holiday with them, and flying is a big no-no for me at the moment. I guess we won't be totally alone since we've been invited to have pie with some friends, but the bulk of the meal is up to us.

The last time I cooked a turkey was when Bryan and I were dating. I remember thinking it was the grossest thing ever. I think, after three children, my gross meter has been readjusted, so maybe it won't be so bad now.

We spent a chunk of yesterday cooking and preparing things to be cooked. We pretty much just have the turkey, the rolls, the sweet potatoes, and the stuffing to do today (which sounds like most of the meal when I list it out), and the sweet potatoes are already cooked and waiting to have butter and marshmallows added to them.

My favorite holiday food is homemade cranberry sauce. I did a quick search and was surprised to find that I've never put the recipe on here. It's time to remedy that.

Homemade Cranberry Sauce

• 1 cup water
• 3/4 cup honey (or 1 cup of sugar if you prefer)
• Combine water and honey in a saucepan and bring to a boil, add

• 1 pound fresh cranberries, rinsed (frozen is fine)
• 1/2 a sweet apple, chopped
• 1/2 an orange, peeled and chopped
• Let all the ingredients cook for a long time, until most of the cranberries have popped and are mushy
• Turn off fire and let cranberries cool, refrigerate before serving

This is a tart dish, so if you like your cranberries sweet, you may want to add more honey or sugar.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Persimmon-y Goodness

Do you have any foods that make you think of Christmas? There are several that quickly put me into a holiday mood. Persimmon Cake is one of them.

My Grandma's neighbors have a persimmon tree and they have been gifting her with the heavy, orange fruit for several years. They make a sweet, dense cake and, because they ripen at the end of December, are a holiday staple at my Grandma's house.

When Bryan made his quick trip to California a few weeks ago my Grandma was kind enough to send with him some frozen persimmons from last year's crop. I couldn't find the family recipe for the first batch and made do with one I found on the internet. The cake was good, but not Grandma-good. I looked harder and found the right recipe, tucked into the back of a cookbook, shut away in a drawer. The kids and I have been enjoying persimmon cake for breakfast ever since.

Persimmon Cake

Mix:

2 cups of sugar (or 1 1/2 cups of honey or agave)

3 very ripe persimmons with the peel (I had about 2 cups including the liquid and dumped it all in)

3 Tablespoons oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

Add:

3 cups of flour

1 Tablespoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

Mix thoroughly. Stir in:

2 cups of raisins

2 cups of walnuts (optional)

Bake at 350 degrees for 55 minutes. I got two full-sized loaves of bread from this recipe. My Grandma usually makes five smaller loaves. I would guess that the smaller loaves don't take as long to cook, but I haven't tested that myself.

Granola Tinkering

I've been playing with my granola bar recipe. Thus far I've made two modifications, one major, one minor.

The minor change was that I added cinnamon. I love cinnamon and toss it in whenever I can. Oatmeal? Yup. Chocolate chip cookies? Sure. Homemade chicken nuggets? Absolutely. So the addition of cinnamon was a no-brainer. The first time I used it I added 1 teaspoon. That was too much. The next time I went for 1/2 teaspoon. That was too little. I'm thinking 3/4 teaspoon should work. I'll try that next time.

The major change was that I swapped out the oil for applesauce. In addition to making them healthier, this modification made them softer, thus solving the complaint that they were too crunchy. Unfortunately, some of the flavor was lost. I haven't hit upon a satisfactory solution yet. Maybe half oil, half applesauce?

It's Not Easy Being Green-Oh Wait, Maybe It Is...

We had French Toast for dinner tonight. It was delicious. However, I felt like our meal was lacking in something important: nutrition. So, I took a cue from a handful of friends and pulled the spinach out of the fridge. We enjoyed our first green smoothies tonight. Technically, they were a deep purple because of the berries I added, but the concept of a green smoothie still holds.

I just threw a bunch of stuff in the blender, so here's my Not Really a Recipe recipe.

Green Smoothies-First Attempt

• 1 cup orange juice
• 3 cups spinach
• 3/4 to 1 cup blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries
• rice milk (no idea how much I put in)
• 1 can of pears
• ice

Blend. Drink.

Here's the photographic evidence of how much we enjoyed it.

No, Phoebe didn't have any of the smoothie, but she did have prunes for the first time today, and she's really cute, so I thought that deserved a picture.

The Granola Wars

Occasionally I am besieged with an overwhelming desire to bake something that is generally only store bought. Like bagels. I only made those once, but they were good and not too difficult. Hmm... I should make more bagels.

The boys and I have been talking for quite some time about making granola bars. I love granola bars. I love granola in general. And Peter can't eat many of the granola bars you can buy in the store. So I set about finding a recipe that looked appealing.

I found two. We made the first one last week and the second one yesterday. Here are the recipes and my accompanying thoughts:

The First

CHOCOLATE CHIP GRANOLA BARS

Makes 16 Bars

Ingredients

4 cups of quick cooking oats

1/3 cup canola oil

2/3 cup honey

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1 cup chopped organic nuts (optional) (We omitted the nuts.)

Method

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spread oats on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes, stirring a couple of times. Allow oats to cool to room temperature. Combine remaining ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add cooled oats. Spread mixture into a 9x13-inch baking dish that has been sprayed or oiled, pressing down hard to compact it. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool completely and cut into bars.

Nutrition

With chopped nuts: Per serving (50g-wt.): 230 calories (110 from fat), 13g total fat, 2g saturated fat, 4g protein, 28g total carbohydrate (3g dietary fiber, 14g sugar), 0mg cholesterol, 0mg sodium Without chopped nuts:Per serving (42g-wt.): 180 calories (70 from fat), 7g total fat, 1.5g saturated fat, 3g protein, 27g total carbohydrate (2g dietary fiber, 14g sugar), 0mg cholesterol, 0mg sodium

We really liked these. They were sweet, but not too sweet. And they were surprisingly easy. Our only qualm was that they were a little too crunchy and the first few didn't hold together as well as we would have liked. I think that may have been because we ate them before they were completely cool. Pesky patience...

The Second

April’s Chewy Chocolate Chip Coconut Granola Bars

Ingredients:

2.5 cups rolled oats
0.25 cup ground flax (We used 1/2 cup flax, 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, and left out the next 3 items.)
0.25 cup raw sesame seeds
0.25 cup roasted salted pumpkin seeds
0.25 cup raw sunflower seeds
0.5 cup unsweetened shredded coconut (We only had sweetened, so we used that instead.)
0.5 cup semi-sweet milk chocolate chips
1 t cinnamon

1 t vanilla extract

0.3 cup honey
0.25 cup agave nectar
1 cup sunflower seed butter (I only had 1/8 cup sunflower seed butter left, so I used soy nut butter for the rest.)

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line an 8×8 baking pan with parchment/wax paper.
2. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl.
3. Combine wet ingredients in a different bowl.
4. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix till well combined.
5. Press granola bar mixture into the baking pan. Cut into 8 bars BEFORE baking.
6. Bake for 25 minutes. (I have a convection bake setting on my oven and baked mine for 17 minutes)
7. Let cool completely (I put mine in the fridge on a hot pad) before removing bars from the pan.
8. Enjoy!

These were good, but not really granola bars. They were more like cookie bars. And the recipe says to cut the batch into 8 bars, but we cut ours into 16. They were thick and would have been HUGE if we'd left it at 8. Peter and Cooper liked them, but I don't think we'll make them again.

I've been pondering various add-ins to change that first recipe. And I'm wondering how to make them slightly chewier without sacrificing the granola bar quality.

The best part about making our own granola bars was the delight on Peter's face at the prospect of getting to eat real granola bars. He was thrilled, which made me smile.

Have you ever made granola bars? Do you have a favorite recipe you're itching to share?

What Peter Is Thankful For

Peter: (as he was saying his personal prayers last night) Thank Thee that we had such a yummy dinner. And thank Thee that Mommy didn't need any help.

He had offered to help with dinner, and I thought I had given him a job, but apparently I didn't.

This was the "yummy dinner" we had. I think next time I'm going to try it with a less expensive sausage, like, maybe hot dogs. We ate it over rice with a spinach salad and a serving of applesauce. And it was delicious.

Aidells Chicken & Apple Minis In Marsala Cranberry Sauce

Description

The sweet and savory sauce is the perfect complement to our Chicken & Apple Minis.

Ingredients

2	T	unsalted butter
1		onion, finely chopped
1	c	(5 oz) dried cranberries, finely chopped
1	c	sweet marsala wine (I used red grape juice instead)
1	T	sweet and hot mustard (we like mendocino sweet & hot mustard) (I used honey mustard.)
1/3	c	(3 oz) brown sugar
2		12-ounce packages (64 mini links) aidells chicken & apple mini (We used the full sized sausages, I just sliced them up.)

Instructions

Melt the butter in a 10-inch sauté pan over medium high heat. Add the onion and sauté until translucent. Add the cranberries and sauté 2 minutes more. Add the wine, mustard and brown sugar and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until reduced and thickened, about 3 minutes.

Add the sausages and toss to coat. Cook until the sausages are heated through, about 5 minutes. Serve in a warmed bowl, crock-pot or chafing dish with cocktail picks.

Serves 14-16 as a part of an appetizer buffet.

---

Source URL: https://www.aidells.com/content/aidells-chicken-apple-minis-marsala-cranberry-sauce

A Chicken In Every Pot (Pie)

I've cooked three dinners this week. One was fantastic, one was adequate, and one was kind of gross.

The adequate dinner was peach pancakes. I over-mixed them and they ended up kind of tough. For someone that makes pancakes as often as I do, I should have known better.

The gross dinner was porcupine meatballs. We have two recipes: one out of a cookbook and one that Bryan's mom taught me. I trade off which one I make. This time it came from the cookbook. The meatballs didn't hold together, so it turned into porcupine meat sauce. I'm not sure why it tasted so awful, but I do know that I'm going to use Bryan's mom's recipe more often from now on.

The fantastic dinner was chicken pot pie and it was so very good. I had two recipes that I couldn't choose between, so I used bits and pieces of both. It is for that reason that I'm writing this post. I want to remember what I did to produce such yumminess. And Bryan and I had a kind of post-mortem and discussed what could be done next time to make it even better.

Chicken Pot Pie

Combine:

• 2 cups chicken (I only used 1 cup and shredded it, but I think following the original recipe and using 2 cups would be better. And don't shred it, the chicken disappeared into the sauce just a little too much.)
• 2 cups California blend vegetables, cooked till al dente (I used 1 1/2 cups, but more would be better.)
• 1 cup of cooked (not mushy) potato, diced (One medium-sized potato was plenty.)

In a saucepan:

• Melt 1/4 cup butter and add the following:
• 1/3 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp salt (I think I'll add a little more next time.)
• 1/4 tsp thyme (The recipe called for sage. I didn't have any, so I used thyme.)
• 1/4 tsp rosemary
• 1/8 tsp pepper
• 1/2 dash (Does that make sense?) garlic powder
• 3 cups milk

Stir contents of saucepan over medium heat until sauce thickens. Be patient, it might take a while. Pour sauce over chicken and vegetable mixture, stir till evenly coated. Pour that into a 9-inch pie crust. Top with a second pie crust. Seal the edges and add a few slits to the top.

Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes with a layer of aluminum foil around the edges of the pie. Remove the foil and bake for an additional 15 minutes.

Let cool, while basking in the delightful aromas wafting from your kitchen.

This Is My Sixteeth Post With the Word Pumpkin In It

Bryan rearranged the freezer a few days ago (in an attempt to fit in more food storage stuff) and found my final cup of frozen pumpkin from last year's jack-o-lanterns. I figured a year was long enough and asked him to stick it in the fridge so I would remember to use it.

Since then I've been craving pumpkin cookies. I finally decided that we should make some and I went to find my favorite recipe, the one that I copied out of my Mom's cookbook when I went to college.

And it was gone.

It was then that I remembered that the last time I made these cookies (a few weeks ago) the page the recipe was written on had been about to break free from it's mooring. I guess I've loved that cookbook a little too much. After a quick (but understated) freak-out, I found the paper stuck inside a different cookbook.

It occurred to me that the best way to not lose the recipe again was to put it on the blog. And, bonus, that means I get to share it with you. I think everyone has a favorite pumpkin recipe (everyone that likes pumpkin at least) and this is mine. And according to what he said when I talked to him a few weeks ago, it's my brother's favorite too. My brother who makes ridiculously good cookies (or so I've heard) and loves to bake as much as I do, so that's saying something.

Pumpkin Cookies

Combine:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt (I prefer kosher salt)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg

Set aside.

In a new bowl cream:

• 1/2 cup butter or margarine
• 3/4 cup honey (or 1 cup sugar if that's what you prefer)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup pumpkin
• 1 cup raisins (if you're my brother) or chocolate chips (if you're Bryan)

Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

Oh, and according to my notes these cookies have 95 calories apiece, which means tonight I have consumed 475 calories in pumpkin cookie form. Maybe I should save the rest for another day...

Sugar and Vinegar

I just put this into the oven:

Mom's Easy Mix Chocolate Cake (Not my mom, my former visiting teacher's mom)
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
6 tablespoons cocoa
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons salt
12 tablespoons melted butter or margarine
2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla

Mix (with electric mixer) all above ingredients - adding 2 cups of water and mixing well.
Pour into 9x13 pan or 24 cup cakes.
Bake at 350 degree oven for 25 minutes.

Notice what it doesn't have? Eggs. And because of the vinegar, I don't even have to come up with a substitute. This comes out very much like a red velvet cake, except it looks like a regular old chocolate cake on the outside.

Happy Family Home Evening treat to us!

Sweet and Low

I've been craving doughnuts, which I can't eat, because the sugar would seriously mess me up. So I've been thinking about making my own. I found some baked doughnut recipes online that I'm tempted to try, but I was wondering, do any of you have good doughnut recipes? Or recipes for things that are similar to doughnuts? Or things that are low in sugar but high in delicious?

I just want something sweet, and my juice-sweetened popsicles aren't cutting it.

Sweater Weather

Happy Autumn! I've been trying to get myself psyched for Fall (aka the death of Summer) by getting Peter psyched for Fall. He knew that yesterday was the last day of Summer. When ever I asked what tomorrow (today) was (is) he would say, "Halloween!"

Last night I put dinner into the oven late so Bryan suggested that instead of waiting for it to finish and in turn getting the boys into bed late we should have Peter's current favorite food: cereal. So I popped our chicken into the oven to bake and we sat down to Trix, Rice Chex, and Raisin Bran. Thank goodness cereal is relatively healthy.

We will have last night's dinner tonight. Before I put it into the fridge last night I tasted it. Delicious. It was so good my eyes got a little watery. And you know what? I made up the recipe. That's right, this girl, who has never been that great at improvisational cooking, invented something good.

And so, I present to you The Chicken:

• 3 chicken breasts, cut in half hamburger style (so now you have 6)

Combine in freezer size Ziploc bag (or whatever brand bag you happen to have, it won't effect the food... as far as I know)

• 1/2 cup bread crumbs (we made bread crumbs from this)
• Parmesan cheese (I think I put in 1/4 cup, but that's really just a guess.)
• A few shakes of course ground black pepper
• A few shakes of dried sweet basil
• A few shakes of garlic powder (Sensing a trend?)
• A few shakes of season salt
• The secret ingredient: A few shakes of cinnamon

Give the chicken the old Shake-and-Bake treatment and cook it in the oven at 350 degrees until it's done. I used a meat thermometer, so I'm not sure of the exact time. Forty minutes maybe?

As you can tell this can barely be called a recipe. It's more of a throw-what-you've-got-into-a-bag-until-it-smells-right-and-then-cook-it-and-eat-it. The cinnamon adds just the right hint of warmth and richness. It's very Fall-ish. We're going to eat it with rice, slices of homemade bread, and green beans and carrots picked from our garden.

I'm looking forward to dinner. And maybe Autumn...

One Step Closer to Living on a Commune

We made homemade yogurt in the crockpot and it was delicious. Bryan blended blackberries in, then we sweetened it with sugar (Bryan) and honey (me and Peter).


And as an added bonus, no one was poisoned.

Hurray for growing bacteria!

Nutricious and Delicious

We do a lot of baking at our house, which is kind of tricky considering my no-sugar thing and Peter's allergies to eggs and peanuts. But Peter loves to help me bake, so we bake. On Tuesday we made banana muffins and blueberry muffins. (I had no idea how easy muffins from scratch are. No more box mixes for us!)

On Wednesday Peter told me that we should bake something "to warm up the house," which was what I had said on Tuesday about the muffins. Although we didn't get around to them until yesterday afternoon, cookies were the heating element of choice. These are the healthiest cookies I've seen, or had, and they're also delicious, so I'm sharing them with you.

Oatmeal Cookies (They need a better name, Oatmeal Cookie doesn't do them justice.)

Thoroughly beat:

• 1/2 cup oil or butter
• 3/4 cup honey (or 1 cup brown sugar)
• 1/4 cup applesauce (or 1 egg, but of course we don't do it that way)
  
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Add:

• 1 cup flour (white or whole wheat)
• 1/2 cup dry milk
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Beat well. Stir in:

• 2 cups oats
• 1 cup wheat germ (that's right, wheat germ, go with it)
• 3/4 cup to 1 cup chocolate chips or raisins

Drop by spoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Or put into a 9"x13" baking dish and bake at the same temperature for 25 minutes. They make great cookie bars and if you make them with raisins they are excellent with milk as a granola-like cereal.

I think you could substitute other chips (carob, white chocolate, butterscotch, peanut butter) or dried fruit (cranberries, chopped apples, cherries) and they would still be great. The other variation I've done is to substitute 1/2 cup of oats with 1/2 cup of coconut, which was decadent. Well, as decadent as wheat germ cookies can be.