Honey Granola with Pumpkin Pie Spice

Honey Granola with Pumpkin Pie Spice

4 C rolled oats (not quick oats)
1 Cup nuts (whole or pieces) (suggested: almonds, pecans, walnuts, filberts, pumpkin seeds)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (or 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, pinch of nutmeg, pinch of clove)

1/4 Cup vegetable oil
1/4 Cup washed cane sugar (white sugar)
1/2 teaspoon molasses
1/2 Cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
1 1/2 Cups raisins and/or other dried fruit (added while cooling)

Preheat oven to 300° F. Lightly grease a 13" x 9" pan with deep sides.

Mix oats, salt, and spices in a bowl and set aside.

In a saucepan, combine oil, sugar, molasses, and honey. Warm until incorporated. (Do not boil.) Stir in the vanilla extract.

Carefully pour the warm honey mixture over the oat mixture and fold it in.  Spread the combination into your pan.

Bake for 40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. Check in the last 5 minutes because oven times vary.
When it is done and cooling, stir in the dried fruit. Scrape the granola loose from the pan while warm; this will reduce the amount of sticking to the pan when cool. Allow it to cool completely before storing in an air-tight container. It will keep at room temperature for up to one week.

If you like clusters, I recommend using baking parchment instead of greasing the pan. That will allow you to leave the mix until completely cool, which is how you get clusters. Otherwise, when you scrape the granola loose, you break the granola into a looser, muesli-like cereal. Increase the sugar by 1/4 Cup and decrease the honey by the same amount for a harder, sweeter granola.

Granola is one of those things that is expensive when store-bought, but can be marvelously cheap if you make it yourself -- especially if you are using up ingredients on hand. It is one of those straightforward recipes that work consistently, as long as you follow the easy instructions. Stirring every 10 minutes is vital, or else the granola will not toast evenly, and it will burn instead.

It's a superb use for crystalized honey. Honey is often expensive these days, but if you have a Farmers Market, there is often a honey vendor who sells better honey than the supermarket for a lower price. If you have a Trader Joe's store near you, their mesquite honey is perfectly suitable and as low as $10 for a 3 pound container.

Have you noticed that when you buy a bottle of molasses for holiday gingerbread, you still have most of a bottle well past New Years? Other granola recipes ask for brown sugar, but I use my brown sugar up on a regular basis. Regular sugar and molasses take the place of brown sugar in this recipe. (Brown sugar is sugar where the molasses has been returned to it after the first stages of refining.)

Pumpkin pie spice is another one of those things that shows up around the holidays but has limited use, unless you like a lot of things to taste like pumpkin pie. If you have it, it's a good shortcut for this recipe. If not, cinnamon is the vital spice in this recipe. Clove, nutmeg, ground ginger, and even cardamom are merely accents.

Oats can be purchased from the bulk section of grocery stores and co-ops for lowest cost. I usually have oats on hand, but I'm not good about eating oatmeal often enough to use my oats up fast. I'm a big fan of granola, which is full of crunchy goodness, spice, and sweet. I first decided to try my hand at granola because I was concerned that my oats had been hanging around too long, and might be getting a little stale. I had some nuts in shells left over from holiday nuts, and raisins that had been forgotten until they lost all plumpness.

I made this batch with "plumasins," little pieces of dried plum. Previous batches had dried apricots that I chopped into fine pieces. If you aren't a fan of raisins, there are a lot of options. I may try drying some backyard tree apples to use in granola later.

Chickpea Popovers stuffed with Curry Chicken Salad

For the chicken salad:

2 Cups of roasted chicken, chopped

1/2 Cup plain yogurt, or mayonnaise if preferred

2 TBL curry powder

1 Cup roasted, salted cashews

1/4 Cup golden raisins

1/4 Cup cranberries

 cilantro leaves for garnish (optional)

For the popovers:

1 Cup chickpea (besan) flour

1/2 tsp salt

3 eggs (I use medium sized eggs)

1 Cup milk

1 tsp olive oil

1/4 tsp garlic granules

1/4 tsp black pepper

spritz of lemon juice (about 1/8 tsp)

Jumbo (6 muffin) muffin tin

Cooking spray

Mix all ingredients except cilantro for the chicken salad together. Set aside. If possible, prepare the chicken salad in advance. The flavors of the spices come out more fully after a day. 

Preheat oven to 450.

In a separate bowl, gently wisk together all in ingredients for the popovers until a smooth batter forms. Grease the muffin pan; cooking spray makes this easy. Pour the batter equally into each of the muffin cups, about halfway. 

Bake at 450 for 20 minutes. Then lower the heat to 350 and continue baking for 15 more minutes. Total bake time is 35 minutes.

Pop popovers out of the pan while still hot. Turn so that the side with a depression is up, and fill the "bowl" with curry chicken salad. Garnish with cilantro.

Coffee & Creamer Cookies

Coffee with Creamer Cookies (Eggless)

2/3 Cup oil
1/3 Cup liquid non-dairy creamer or milk (flavored or plain)
2/3 Cup sugar
3 teaspoons (1 Tablespoon) ground French Roast coffee (Turkish ground)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon dark molasses
2 Cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 F.

In a bowl, combine oil, creamer, sugar, coffee, vanilla, and molasses. If using a thick creamer, mix 50/50 with water to thin for a total 1/3 Cup. Stir ingredients until incorporated. Add the remaining dry ingredients and stir until mixed evenly.

Bake on a cookie sheet for 12-15 minutes. Makes 1 1/2 dozen 2" cookies.

This dough is safe (and delicious) to eat raw.

Lemon Lavender Cake with Lemon Icing

This is an easy recipe that uses plain, non-fat yogurt and safflower oil, with just a little butter to fill out the flavor notes. I used culinary lavender from Lost Mountain Lavender Farm in Sequim, Washington. If you are a fan of lavender, you can experience the best-smelling festival around: the Sequim Lavender Festival, which happens each year in July.

Though our lavender is spectacular here in Washington, our citrus is less  wonderful. For this reason, I had something called "volcano lemon burst" on hand instead of actual lemon. Volcano Lemon Burst comes in a plastic lemon-shaped container; it's a blend of water, lemon juice, and lemon oil. Since I didn't have any lemon zest or lemon oil for this recipe, it was a good choice for this cake. You could use fresh lemon and its zest, if you have them.

The other ingredients are available year-round, allowing a taste of summer any time the winter blues get to you.

Cake Ingredients:

1 TBL unsalted butter

1/4 C oil

1 C white sugar

2 medium eggs

½ tsp vanilla extract

2 C all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

½  tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1 C plain yogurt

1 ½ TBL dried lavender flowers

¼ C lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour a 12 Cup bundt pan.

Cream butter, oil, and sugar. Add in eggs and beat until mixed, about 1 minute.

Mix dry ingredients except for the lavender. Add the dry mixture into the oil-sugar mixture, alternately with yogurt. Do not overmix. Fold in lemon juice and the lavender.

Bake for 1hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool completely before removing it from the pan. When cool, drizzle on the glaze. (See recipe below.)

If you cover the cake (such as putting it in a cake carrier or covered container) before the icing sets completely, the icing will wrinkle slightly.

     

Lemon sugar glaze

For the sugar glaze:

2 cups powdered sugar, sifted

2 tablespoons milk

1 tablespoon lemon juice

A pinch of dried lavender flowers

Prepare the glaze:

Combine the powdered sugar, milk and lemon juice in a small bowl. Stir with a rubber spatula until the glaze is smooth and of drizzling consistency. Spoon the glaze over the top of each slightly cooled cake, letting some run down unevenly on the sides. Sprinkle the lavender decoratively over the tops of the glaze and serve.

Bob's Red Mill Vegetable Soup

The time I followed the recipe on the package, I got mush. Maybe I didn't follow the recipe to the letter, in that it may have boiled, but -- mush? The mush became meatloaf.

There was still an almost full package of Bob's Red Mill Vegi Soup Mix in my kitchen, however. The first thing I decided to try was making soup again, this time soup that would not be mush soup.

This is a soup mix of barley, lentils, split peas, and vege pasta. The cooked down vege pasta was responsible for the mush factor. While there is a recipe on the back for creamed soup, where after the hour of cooking, the soup is blended mush, I didn't completely believe that the shorter cook time for the pasta elements had been factored in when creating the mix.

I looked to Alton Brown's advice on rice, and took elements from a great white bean minestrone recipe that I have.

1 Cup Bob's Red Mill Vegi Soup Mix
1 TBL Earth Balance non-hydrogenated buttery topping (coconut oil would be a good substitution)
3 Cups water (not stock!)

1 tsp tomato paste
2 large cloves of garlic, sliced thinly
1 carrot, cut into circles
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute (a seasoning blend similar to Mrs. Dash, list below*)

 Melt the buttery topping in a saucepan on low heat. Add the soup mix. Stir until coated with the melted fat.

 Add the water. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes on very low heat. Do not allow to boil.

Test a split pea; tender "al dente" but not at all chalky or hard is perfectly cooked for this soup. When ready, add remaining ingredients and cover. Turn off heat, and allow 5 - 10 minutes for the flavors to incorporate. Taste; increase seasoning if desired.

This makes a hearty, thick soup with a lot of chew factor. I didn't have any other vegetables to add in besides the carrot, and I'm glad. I think more would have upset the texture. The basic soup mix has what it needs for the foundations of a satisfying soup. It made a good main dish for dinner. I was happy that it reheated well in the microwave, for take-to-work lunch.








TJ's 21 Seasoning Salute (below) has muchin common with  Mrs. Dash - Original Blend .

Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute ingredients label

*Onion
Spices (black pepper, celery seed, cayenne pepper, parsley, basil, majoram, bay leaf, oregano, thyme, savory, rosemary, cumin,  mustard, coriander)
Garlic
Carrot
Orange peel
Tomato granules
Lemon juice powder
Oil of lemon
Citric acid

Gruyere & Applesauce biscuits

2 C all purpose flour
2 1/2 TBL baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 C non-hydrogenated shortening
small knob of gruyere, about 3 TBL


1 C small curd cottage cheese (including separated whey)
1/4 C unsweetened applesauce

Preheat oven to 450F.

Combine flour, b. powder, & salt. Mix thoroughly. Cut in shortening until you create a sandy consistency. Slice the gruyere into small pieces and blend in.thoroughly. You can do this with your hands.

Add cottage cheese and applesauce. Mix in, allow to rest 5 minutes if it looks dry. Knead to incorporate the dough into a ball, shape into a log, and slice into 6 pieces. Bake for 15 minutes for a golden color.