I’m very picky about granola. Chunks to big? Out. Almonds? Nope. Extra sweet? Heck no — this is a breakfast food, remember?
But it’s very hard not to succumb to that tempting aisle of products, especially when every other week there’s a new granola on the shelves. And as I reach for it, I think, This time. This will be my perfect granola.
It never is, of course, and I’m left with a half-eaten bag and a full case of regret.
When I remember, I make my own. Given my busy schedule, this is easier said than done. It’s not that granola takes a long time – an hour tops, most of it hands-off – it’s that I just seem to completely forget about it until breakfast the next morning.
My favorite versions right now include flavored honeys and a touch of dried fruit. Too much dried fruit makes it too sweet and sticky for me, but I like the burst of sweetness small fruits like blueberries, currants, and chopped apricots bring to the oats. This flavor, using Lemon Honey Creme, dried blueberries, and lemon zest, reminds me of my favorite muffin.
I add the blueberries after the granola has cooked, and you’ll probably want to do this as well. While cooking the blueberries with the oats helps spread out their flavor, it also can turn them into overly dry bits that taste like the scorched bits under a stove burner. So you probably want to avoid that.
Lemon Blueberry Granola
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup Lemon Honey Creme
4 cups rolled oats
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup dried blueberries
2 teaspoons lemon zest, optional
Preheat oven to 300 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
In a small sauce pan, melt together butter and honey creme.
Mix together oats, walnuts, and salt in a large bowl. Drizzle over butter mixture and stir well to coat.
Spread onto baking sheets and bake for about 30 minutes, rotating baking sheets halfway through.
Remove from oven and immediately scatter blueberries and lemon zest, if using, over the top of the granola. Stir quickly and then press granola down, to help form large chunks.
Let cool completely, and store in airtight containers, preferably glass.
Makes 2 quarts.
This post is part of my continuing relationship with Honey Ridge Farms and their Spread the Love campaign.
Once you’ve been out of commission on the cooking and blogging front, it’s amazingly hard to scrape back in. Even for someone who loves cooking and writing. I’d blame my new job, where I spend much of the day typing up recipes, uploading photos, and putting up blog posts – but I love the job. It would be kind of hard not to, considering they pay me to do the things that I already have been doing on my own.
But the commute is what depletes my cooking battery. My previous job was five minutes from my house, so this hour-in hour-out daily schedule has been dampening my spirits. As a result, we haven’t been eating as well as we used to, relying far more on takeout than I would like.
Thankfully, I seem to have kicked that to the curb, all thanks to this two-ingredient recipe for salmon that made for a killer (and extremely quick) dinner.
I used Honey Ridge Farms Sundried Tomato Tarragon Honey Vinegar, which is full of flavor but mild enough that my son didn’t think there was anything “weird” going on his plate. He loves salmon, so I knew this tangy-yet-sweet glaze would be a fun change from merely baking the fish with lemon.
Happily, everyone gobbled it up, and I have a good portion of my bottle of honey vinegar to use for fish night again. I know my interstate-glazed eyes and brain will appreciate it.
Honey Vinegar Glazed Salmon
1 tablespoon grapeseed or olive oil
2 salmon fillets, 4-6 ounces each
1/2 cup Sundried Tomato Tarragon Honey Vinegar
Heat oil in a nonstick straight-side skillet over medium. Set salmon, skin side up, in the pan. Cook approximately 3 minutes, then flip fillets over and cook another 3 minutes. Remove to a plate and set aside.
Add honey vinegar to hot skillet and increase heat to medium-high. When the liquid starts to get bubbly, return salmon, skin side up, to the pan. Cook until the liquid has reduced and the salmon is glazed, 3-5 minutes. Remove to a plate and serve.
Serves 2 (or perhaps 2 adults and 1 preschooler)
This post is part of my continuing relationship with Honey Ridge Farms and their Spread the Love campaign.
As a novice mushroom eater, I’m always looking for interesting ways to work mushrooms into my meals. Although I’ve managed to work my way up to eating whole mushrooms instead of picking out every tiny bit of ‘shroom from condensed soup, I don’t often get a craving for them. Of course, when many of your groceries are selected for you by the team at Greenling, you have to change your mind about what you want to eat, and make it what you want to eat.
I don’t remember how I thought of this combination of mushroom pesto and grilled cheese, but I know I love regular pesto with cheese and bread, so I couldn’t go much wrong.
Mushroom Pesto Grilled Cheese
For the pesto:
6 ounces button mushrooms
1/4 cup walnuts
1/2 cup fresh parsley
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large garlic clove
1/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon salt
Blitz everything in a blender or food processor until smooth.
For the grilled cheese:
Butter
Sourdough bread
Slices provolone cheese
Mushroom pesto
For each sandwich, butter two slices of bread on one side. Spread the pesto on the opposite side of one slice bread, add 1-2 slices of cheese, then top with the other slice of bread. Fry on the stove over medium heat for about 3 minutes a side, or until golden brown.
Leftover pesto can be used as a dip for veggies, a pasta sauce, or mixed into scrambled eggs. When storing in the fridge, add a thin layer of olive oil to the top to help prevent an unattractive browning of the pesto. If you forget, you can just scrape the darker portions off.
The spring my brother finally, completely killed the raspberry bushes with the lawnmower marked a turning point in my life.
We never realize things like that at the time they are happening. When you are 13 or 15 or 17, the moments you think will be unerased scars involve lunchroom fights or high school breakups. (OK… sometimes those high school breakups haunt reminiscent dreams.) Fruit does not often take part in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure prompt.
Raspberries don’t grow in Texas, and the blackberries we have are not the delicate sweet type, but hulking tart masses that cannot be eaten from fingertips. A man recently stared blankly at my tattooed arm, demanding to know the fruit and not comprehending why the berries were indeed not black. I stared back, not comprehending why he didn’t recognize a fruit that I held so dear.
It feels strange for me, usually so focused on local foods and seasonality, to be writing about raspberries when most parts of the country have just begun to see blushing strawberries. And yet in my life, raspberries no longer have a season. It’s not just the ever-present reminder of my inked arm that has simultaneously pulled me closer and pushed me away from this tiny scrap of memory.
The longer we live in Texas the more I feel my Northern roots slipping away. Not wrenched out all at once, but attacked bit by bit, over the course of years, by strong blades.
We don’t get back up north as often as we’d like, and even the trips we do make are so blanketed by holidays and other obligations that we can hardly spend the time we want with the people we want. Never mind that my family is scattered now, each of us in a different state. “Going home” is fuzzy and strange for me, because I have no where to go in the city I lived for the first 18 years of my life. Every last scrap of that raspberry bush is gone.
I read lots of other blogs, and keep my eyes open on social media. I always feel like I am watching, waiting for something extraordinary to happen, that connects to my past in some inscrutable way that I must cling to. Try as I might, I have not yet been able to find it, neither through recipes using Wisconsin cheese nor sponsored tours to bratwurst country.
Because the raspberries are my story, no one else’s. Odd as it sometimes sounds, they are what led me to this current life of a wife, mother, Austinite, freelance writer, and full-time busy bee in an amazing editorial department.
I realized this when I was at the Foodways Texas symposium, a weekend dedicated to our desire and need to preserve food culture. The more people talked, the more I wished I had listened growing up, and my heart ached to think that there might be stories about my family forever forgotten.
This summer, we’re traveling back north on the pretense of vacation, for me to harvest stories from my relatives. To savor every last word, get them on tape, on paper, on film.
And maybe get a few raspberries.
Every once in a while, I meet and become friends with a writer I’ve admired for a long time. That always makes me feel lucky, because I’ve found a person who is as great in the real world as they are online – surprisingly a rare find. When they invite you to be part of something they love, it’s almost more than flattering, it’s intimidating. And yet they can make you feel so welcome that your fears are easily dissolved.
One such person is Aimée from Simple Bites. I was stunned when she asked me to join the Simple Bites team last year, but I quickly felt like part of the group. Aimee is a born nurturer, and I’ve loved reading about her boys growing up. I couldn’t be happier about her new baby girl, and I know I’m not the only one.
That’s why we decided to surprise Aimée with a virtual baby shower! Now, Aimée, I know this is your third child and you’ve gone through all the motions before, so just sit back, enjoy some snacks, and wait for that sweet girl to come.
I’ve made a refreshing grapefruit and avocado couscous salad. It’s perfect for this almost-spring weather we have, and I swear I did not choose it based on the fact that the beautiful Texas Rio Star grapefruit looks so lovely and baby-girl pink in dishes. Make sure you use avocados that are firm, yet ripe. You want the avocado to maintain its shape in the salad and not get mushy.
You can easily add a zesty vinaigrette to this salad, but I prefer to let the fresh flavors of the grapefruit and avocado shine.
Grapefruit Avocado Couscous Salad
1 cup dry couscous
2 large red grapefruit
2-4 small avocados (or 2 large)
1 tablespoon finely diced shallot
Juice of 1 lime
½ cup diced fresh parsley or cilantro
Salt and pepper
Set a saucepan with 2 cups of water or vegetable stock to boil. Once water is boiling, pour in couscous, cover, and remove from heat. Let stand 5 minutes while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
Section your grapefruit (a helpful tutorial video is located over at Kitchen Daily) and place onto a paper towel. Halve avocados, remove pits, and slice into small chunks. Put avocado in a large bowl along with shallot; drizzle lime juice over the top and stir gently.
Fluff couscous with a fork and add to the bowl. Add grapefruit and parsley or cilantro and stir gently to combine all ingredients. Salt and pepper to taste.
Cover and chill until ready to serve, up to 12 hours in advance. (Any longer and the avocado might start to oxidize and turn an unattractive brown.)
Don’t forget to visit all the rest of the shower recipes!
Strawberry & Vanilla Cupcakes with Strawberry Jam Frosting from Bluebonnets & Brownies
Strawberry Pretzel Dessert by My Baking Addiction
California Veggie Wraps from My Kitchen Addiction
Waffle Cone Fruit Cups by Dine & Dish
Mini Berry Pies on a Stick and Kettle Corn at Food for My Family
Perfectly Pink Pomegranate Smoothies from Food Your Way
Quiche Lorraine from GoodLife{Eats}
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