Brown Granola

I have fallen out of routine. I have eschewed grocery shopping. Failed at cooking. Haven't gotten out my bicycle in more than a year. The animals no longer get their teeth brushed. I have not stuck to my physical therapy exercises.

But it is now Child's Summer Vacation.

We will commit to rebuilding routine. I like one part of this year's routine. Little Miss has taken to sleeping in. She rolls out of bed at 8:15 or later, which for a child who used to be tap dancing at 6 a.m. is HUGE.

Tomorrow is dress rehearsal. Four plus hours of being backstage with the other little dancers, probably 4:30 pm to 8:30 ish as we give it a practice run before Saturday night's big performance.

Little Miss is sleeping (8 a.m.) and I am making granola. Granola is a staple in this house but I haven't been making it. Bad me! We base our granola on the recipe from the Deirdre Imus' Imus Ranch Cookbook.

Today the only dried fruit I have in the house is one handful of dried cherries. 1/4 cup. I meant to buy at least raisins at Target yesterday but forgot.

So I call this variation brown granola, because except for that tiny batch of cherries, everything in it is boring brown. 

Dry Ingredients

- 4 cups oats

- about 3 tablespoons cinnamon

- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

- about 1 tablespoon grated candied ginger 

- that measly 1/4 cup dried cherries

- about 1/3 cup raw almonds

- about 2/3 cup raw cashews

The WET ingredients

- about 1/4 cup local raw honey

- about 1/4 cup blackstrap molasses

- about 1/4 cup warm coconut oil

- about 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Mix wet and dry ingredients until oats are all evenly damp. Spread on cookie sheet and bake in a 350 oven for about 30 minutes, stirring and flipping after 15. You want to cook it until mostly dry. But not burned. Obviously.

Steak and zucchini cakes

Little Miss came home from winter Girl Scout camp, and since it's New Year's Eve tonight and I work the closing shift, I made a hot meal for lunch.

Over the summer I froze some shredded zucchini, and today I retrieved a pack of about 3.5 cups. Once thawed and drained of excess moisture, the zucchini yields about two cups.

The zucchini cakes are a variation of the crabbi-less cakes in Deidre Imus' Imus Ranch Cookbook. Today I made a use-up-the-leftover-Christmas-cheese version.

I started with 1.5 cups of cornflake crumbs, probably about 1.5 cups of various cubed cheese that I broke into tiny shreds (Colby jack, Gouda, and tomato laughing cow). For seasonings, I added about 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning, 1 teaspoon lemon Dijon mustard, 1 tablespoon ranch dressing, 1 tablespoon mayo, and 1/2 teaspoon low sodium soy sauce. Add an egg, shape into patties and fry about five minutes on each side being careful not to let the cheese stick to the pan.

I made little steaks with a brandy cream sauce.

Both of these (the zucchini cakes and the steak in brandy cream sauce) I've blogged about before. They are family favorites.

Grating zucchini

I make Deidre Imus' Crabiless Crab Cakes often. Though I call them zucchini cakes. Her Imus Ranch cookbook has fabulous vegetarian/vegan recipes without a lot of fuss and fancy ingredients. Plus reading about the ranch is interesting.

But I digress.

My mother gave me two zucchini from a friend's garden. My daughter keeps asking for zucchini cakes, but I forgot and she leaves for camp today. Therefore I'm prepping zucchini for freezing. I normally grate, dry on dishtowels and freeze in bags of 2 cups each. When doing this, you have to watch the moisture level when you use the zucchini after freezing. Zucchini is normally wet and freezing and thawing really brings that moisture out.

I'm trying to dry my zucchini by baking it on a cookie sheet at 300 degrees, checking it every 5-7 minutes so I don't cook it.

Back on track?

Yesterday I had one of my meltdowns. Between my health (anemia-related issues still kick myass from time to time), the final weeks of school and working too many hours, I was overextended.

And as my psychologist once told me, being overextended makes me crazy.

So I called out sick.

Between the exhaustion, the multiple open wounds on my hands from a fall I took on Saturday, minor babysitter issues AND spilling stuff all over my last clean pair of khakis, I was done. And I was in bed by 7:30 and slept until 7.

Part of my problem stemmed from not eating proper dinners because I had worked 4 nights in a row and of those four nights, the last three I ate dinner on a fifteen minute break. That gets compounded by shifts that start at 3 or 4, meaning even if I eat a good meal before I leave home, it's not enough.
Last night, I let child pick a restaurant and we went out to dinner to celebrate her report card. She selected a franchise based on her desire for chocolate pudding until I pointed out the dairy issue. She selected a kid and ice cream oriented franchise instead, saying she'd forego the ice cream if we gave her a tofutti cutie at home.

Considering the quality of our meal, I should have talked her out of that too. She ordered processed chicken on sticks that was supposed to come with salad, carrot sticks and celery sticks. It came with lettuce. I'll save my other complaints...

This morning I read the label for the apple fritter bread and as I suspected, it has milk. It has more salt than milk, but it does have milk.

Finally, in an act of desperation, I made my famous homemade granola that the child is munching on right now.

The dry ingredients measures about seven cups, with the dressing consisting of 3.5 tablespoons raw local honey, 1/2 cup blackstrap molasses, and 1/2 cup canola oil.

The dry ingredients were about:
- 3.5 cups oats
- 1/2 cup unsalted raw almonds
-1/4 cup dark cocoa dusted almonds
- 1/2 cup unsalted cashews
- 1 cup dried fruit and peanuts from a commercial trail mix
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons tiny chopped candied ginger
- 1 teaspoon fresh ground cinnamon
- 1 box sour peach flavored golden raisins
- 1 cup golden raisins, dried blueberries and dried strawberries

Mix and bake at 300 for 45 minutes in a thin layer on a cookie sheet, turning every 10-15 minutes.

A variation of the Imus Ranch cookbook recipe

Crazy Zucchini Cakes

Crazy Zucchini Cakes and mango slices

The Crabbiless Crab Cakes from the Imus cookbook are a favorite in this house, but no one -- until today -- has shared zucchini with me.

Clicking on the Imus link should take you into the recipes from that cookbook.

Tonight, I'm nervous as my mixture is feeling too wet and I mixed up some ingredients big time. Using up leftovers.

So, instead of regular cheese (they recommend soy cheese), I mixed cottage cheese, cheddar and smoked gouda.

Instead of breadcrumbs, I used homemade bread crumbs, cornflakes and wegmans whole grain breadcrumbs.

July's granola

Ah, granola...

Thanks to some discussion with friends, I am in the mood to make granola (which is great because random odds and ends are all I have in the house so I can mix them up!).

Adapted from the Imus Ranch cookbook:

Dry ingredients:
-3 cups oats
- 1.5 cups Aldi brand peanut butter crunch cereal
- about one cup dry roasted peanuts
- about one cup mixed nuts
- about 1/4 cup dried cranberries leftover from a salad mix
- about two tablespoons dried candied ginger chopped as small as possible
- four fresh dates chopped into about six pieces each
- dried strawberries, chopped, 1/4 cup
- 1 cup raisins
- 1/3 cup brown sugar


Wet ingredients:
- about 1/2 cup blackstrap molasses
- about three tablespoons honey (omit for vegan version)
- about 1/2 cup canola oil
Mix wet ingredients thoroughly and then mix into dry

Bake at 300 degrees for about 30 minutes, turning frequently, every 10-15 minutes

Add M&M's or butterscotch chips after baking for something decadent

Oatmeal Bars

I'm not quite happy with the breakfast selections around here these days and we can always use something quick, easy and nutritious. I love those Quaker Oatmeal Bars (not the breakfast cookies, those don't have much in the way of nutritional content) and thought maybe I could make something similar at home.

I searched "oatmeal raisin breakfast bar" and found the following:

http://mummam.blogspot.com/2006/10/oatmeal-raisin-breakfast-bars.html

Oatmeal-raisin Breakfast Bars

Ever since I discovered this recipe in a Vegetarian cookbook (published by Barnes & Noble), I hav decided to replace my breakfast porridge with these nutritious and tasty bars and a glass of cold milk!

Makes: 14 bars
Preparation time: 30 minutes

1.5 Cups rolled oats
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup dried raisins
1/2 cup melted butter
oil for greasing

Preheat oven to 375F, grease a 11x7 inch tin.
Stir oats, sugar and raisins together in a bowl.

Add the melted butter and thoroughly stir.
Press the mixture into the pan.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden.
Remove from oven, cut into bars and cool in pan for 5 minutes.
Store in air-tight container for 15 days.

Now, this looks frightening similar to my tried-and-true granola recipe from The Imus Ranch cookbook. And of course, I can never stick to a recipe. So, I mixed up the following:

4.5 cups oats
1/3 cup sugar
2 + cups trail mix
some cashew crumbs from the bottom of the container
1/3 cup raisins
1/2 cup butter
1/8 cup honey
1/4 cup oil

Eliminate the butter and the honey and this recipe could easily become vegan...

Mine are cooling now... and I bet I end up with three or four bars and a big pile of granola...

I was right, and the reason my bars didn't maintain their shape is because I didn't use enough butter. You know, good old fashioned butter. And butter is what cools and hardens and makes them keep their shape.

Monday: zucchini cakes aka crabbiless patties

For breakfast our daughter had two bowls of generic Peanut Butter Captain Crunch, then we went for a bike ride and she had a snack of trail mix, cinnamon grahams and dark chocolate powdered roasted almonds.

My husband and I had waffles with peanut butter for breakfast. He packed the leftover fish my mom (Mimi) made for our daughter Saturday night and some english muffins to make sandwiches for their lunch together, with a side of leftover vegetables and fries and sweet potato fries from the restaurant Friday night.

I packed leftover tuna casserole for my lunch, and threw some zucchini (already shredded) from the freezer into the fridge to thaw. We'll have zucchini cakes from the Imus Ranch cookbook for dinner. Click zucchini or Imus for more details. Deirdre Imus' cookbook is a great one for veg*ns.

Dinner Party

I am completely exhausted and I have one hour until it's time to set the table and two hours until time to start cooking dinner.

We started our day at Wegmans. I was thrilled to find a one-gallon glass sun tea pitcher for $5.99 but distraught to find pineapples were $3.99 and that cored pineapples were $5.99. That's nuts.

I spent $48.76, which I'm counting toward the August budget even though it's July 31. I was bummed about that until I remembered I bought the sun tea pitcher.

I bought:

• 2 pounds Wegman's butter, one salted, one unsalted, $1.50 each
• one pineapple, $3.99 (grrr)
• the large bottle of coffemate vanilla chai spice creamer, $2.99
• 2 pints heavy whipping cream, $1.49 each
• 3 packages of celestial seasoning tea (blueberry, almond, and berry), $2.29 each
• 1 liter of Orangina, $2.49
• 3/4 pound sliced ham from the deli, $4.31
• shredded gruyère (domestic?), $3.60
• smoked gouda, $3.47
• the sun tea jar, $5.99
• 3 lbs bananas, $1.09
• 6 ounces raspberries, $2.50
• strawberries, $2
• ground nutmeg, $2.99

Before we left, I made the pear soup and I had set the brioche out and shaped it. When we got home, I baked it and brewed iced tea (green with berry). Then we went to the liquor store for wine. My husband came home early for lunch, so we had leftover crêpes and then I prepped the pineapple crumble and the zucchini cakes.

At 3 p.m., I'll set the table.

At 4 p.m., I'll start the crôque monsieur.

When the crôque is in the oven, I'll fry the zucchini cakes. While we eat the first courses, the pineapple crumble will bake.

Recipes:
Follow these links:

• Brioche-- from The Paris Cookbook by Patricia Wells, also should be accessible via 'French,' 'bread,' and/or 'brioche.'
• Chilled Pear Soup-- Vegan, eileen bresslin
  
• Zucchini crabbiless cakes-- The Imus Ranch Cookbook, 'vegan' (Deirdre Imus calls it vegan even though she used eggs because she has her own chickens) and zucchini
• Perfumed Pineapple Crumble-- Venez Diner, C'est Prêt by Dominique Malet, follow pineapple or French or the name of the book
• Crôque Monsieur-- obviously French, it's from The Barefoot in Paris Cookbook by Ina garten
• Rye bread-- clicking on rye will show you all my experiments with rye flour

My daughter made me a lovely four-course meal:
Tomato salad (pictured)
Piled-High Sandwiches
A cheese and egg platter
Chocolate-Carrot Crumble

Crabbiless Crab Patties

This recipe comes from The Imus Ranch Cookbook. That particular cookbook considers itself vegan because they raise their own chickens and therefore have a comfort with eggs. If you are truly vegan, this recipe will not appeal to you.

For the everyday eater, this is a fabulous way to use up those zucchini from the garden, especially the big ones that may not longer be tender.

I will be making a version tonight that includes lemon-pepper cheese from the farm.

Crabiless Crab Cakes
By Deirdre Imus
From The Imus Ranch cookbook

2 cups grated zucchini (whether or not you skin it first is a personal preference)
1 cup seasoned breadcrumbs
3/4 cup soy or regular cheddar cheese (I have reduced this in the past)
1/2 cup finely diced red onion (I skip or replace with some chives or with a clove of garlic)
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons vegan (soy) or regular mayo
1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce (I use soy sauce)
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup olive oil (for frying)

Combine everything but the oil in a big bowl, form into patties and fry. They suggest these amounts make six cakes. Cook over medium heat seven to ten minutes per side.

Thursday, July 23... Two days after the original post... I finally got the ingredients assembled to make this. That huge zucchini made about 13 cups grated zucchini. I froze about 5 cups in one bag, four in another and kept the remaining for a double batch of the crabbiless patties.

My ingredients
4.5 cups grated zucchini
3 cups Italian seasoned breadcrumbs
3/4 cup sheddar sharp cheddar
1/2 cup parmesan
1/4 lemon cheese spread from the farm
2 farm fresh brown eggs
2 teaspoons brown mustard
4 tablespoons safflower mayo
2 teaspoons reduced sodium soy sauce
1 teaspoon fresh grated four color pepper
2 teaspoons It's a Dilly
a random spattering of fresh chives

I got 11 patties yield. I layered five on paper towels to help absorb the moisture, covered with wax paper, another paper towel and then another five. I repeated one more time with the last lone pattie and then covered and placed in fridge until ready to cook.

Too much moisture and too rapid heat with make zucchini hash out of your patties. So cook carefully.

Granola and Swiss Trail Mix

I made a simplified version of the Rio Grande Granola from the Imus Ranch Cookbook. The Imus Ranch Cookbook is primarily vegan, except they do use eggs because they have their own chickens. My stepmother bought the cookbook a long time ago, because she likes Imus and the ranch provides kids with cancer a chance to see what they're capable of.

My previous batches of granola are listed under granola, if you need the original recipes.

I like making granola. It's yummy on yogurt and a great light snack. With the right ingredients, it has protein and carbs to keep you going. It takes about an hour start to finish and you can make enough for a month way cheaper than the bulk bins, boxed granola or processed granola bars. Though I do keep a box of Nature Valley Granola bars from the werehouse store as "help yourself" breakfasts when my daughter gets up early on weekends. Nature Valley is the only granola bar I've found that actually has some nutritional value and protein and decent carbohydrate levels.

Today I wanted to combine my homemade granola with some of the Swiss Trail Mix my mom gave me. She gave me three HUGE containers with raisins, peanuts, butterscotch chips, chocolate and dried pineapple. Nutritional content fairly negligable. And while it tastes great, it's mostly sweet.

So yesterday I mixed it with little graham crackers, cashews and yogurt covered raisins. Better, but still sweet.

Hence, the granola today. I took three cups of old-fashioned oats, 1/4 cup organic sugar, about 1.5 tablespoons cinnamon, 1.5 teaspoons oriental five spice, about 1/4 cup cashews, about 1/4 cup graham cracker pieces. Then I made the "sauce": about three tablespoons honey, 1/4 cup blackstrap molasses, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 1/4 cup canola oil, whisked. I poured the sauce into the granola and spread it thin on a cooking sheet once well stirred.

Bake at 300 for 30 minutes, turning every ten minutes.

Then I put one third of it into a big bowl, added an equal amount of swiss mix, put the lid on the bowl and shook it. I did this in layers until the granola was gone. The butterscotch chips melted but got into all the oats and granola.

More granola

My daughter and I made granola this morning. It's in the oven as I type. Our basic granola recipe is from The Imus Ranch cookbook and if you click the granola link below you'll see some of the previous incarnations and instructions.

Today's mix:

(and remember, I use granola to use up some of the stuff that has become unpopular around here)

• dried papaya (which my daughter decided she did not like)
• oats
• plain cheerios 
• sliced almonds
• crushed graham crackers
• raisins
• dried cherries
• honey
• blackstrap molasses
• oil
• sugar
• cinnamon
• ginger
• nutmeg

It's a granola day!

For breakfast, my family had some leftover blueberry pancakes that my husband made recently. I couldn't handle anything as heavy as that at 7 a.m. so I nursed my coffee. When my husband left for work, my daughter and I started making granola.

Why granola?

Because I opened a fresh canister of oats yesterday and my daughter asked for plain old Cheerios at the grocery store and, in preschooler fashion, decided she hated them. Plus, we're low on trail mix so granola would make a nice substitute.

The base for my granola is a recipe from The Imus Ranch cookbook. My stepmother is a huge Imus fan so she bought it, but she doesn't cook. Plus it's primarily vegan so she's certainly not going to do that. Deirdre Imus, while calling herself vegan, does use honey and eggs. She uses eggs because she has her own chickens. So technically, she's ovo-vegetarian.

Basically, I take the Imus recipe for Rio Grande Granola and adapt it for my family's needs. Deirdre Imus combines about 3 cups of oats and dried fruit with spices and about 1/4 cup safflower oil. She flattens it on a sheet and bakes it at 300 degrees for about a half hour, flipping it once at the midpoint.

Now, I double that and in addition to oil I use about 1/4 cup blackstrap molasses for the iron content... Today I had no dried fruit other than raisins and no nuts other than chopped walnut topping so that's what I used. The small nuts are easier for my daughter to chew anyway. Lots of nuts. 1/4 cup in the original recipe. I double that for extra protein... but you'll see.

My plain granola

In a bowl combine: 

2 cups rolled oats;

2 cups Cheerios or other cereal that's been hanging around the house too long;

1/4 cup sugar (I use brown);

1/2 cup raisins or other dried fruit (craisins, dehydrated fruit, etc.);

1/2 cup nuts;

1 tablespoon cinnamon;

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger;

Separately (I use my glass measuring cup) combine: 

1/4 cup oil;

@ 4 tablespoons honey;

1/4 cup blackstrap molasses;

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I only use pure, no imitation in this house)

Pour liquid over dry ingredients and stir until dry ingredients are moist. Spread on large jelly roll pan (Is that what you call the cookie sheets with the lip?) as flat as possible. Bake about 15 minutes at 300. Remove from oven and "flip." I do this by stirring all the granola into the center and flattening it out again. Cook another 15 minutes. Remove from oven. If you want some extra sweetness, sprinkle a couple tablespoons of chocolate sprinkles across the top and let cool slightly before removing from the pan.

Good for a snack. Add to yogurt for a yummy breakfast.