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.

Monday shopping trip to Target

Did I mention that I broke my blender last week? This is especially painful because my lazy butt has a tendency not to eat breakfast. On these days, I get moody and end up appeasing myself with a fruit/yogurt smoothie. I've been making a strawberry/yogurt/coconut milk version every other day for about the last three weeks.

When I broke the blender, I tried making it in the food processor but it's a lot of work. And if the point is to cater to my laziness, more work won't cut it. The first one was tasty, but today I tried it again today with mangoes, cherries and strawberries and it came out lumpy. My daughter loved it. I did not.

My mother brought me her blender. Yeah, Mom! But I'm not sure it can handle the abuse of this household. We shall see.

I did my weekly finance check today. We need groceries. The budget suggests we have $25 to last to the end of the month. This is after I transferred the mortgage payment money from our savings account. Did I mention I'm spending a lot of money on my job hunt? Those trips to D.C. and new shirts for my suit add up over time.

I went to Target. The life insurance payment just went into the mail today so that give me a couple days to rearrange bill payments to have money again... Or so I tell myself. I have enough. so don't worry about me. I just don't have extra. So, I tried to get some value on my Target trip.

**These prices do not reflect my 10 percent team member discount or my 5 percent RedCard discount**

We needed cat litter. Two boxes, 40 pounds each, on sale for $13.99 plus $5 Target gift card when you buy two.

Green Giant Steam in Bag vegetables, on sale for $1.98 each plus buy two get one free. I got plain broccoli florets, and then two with sauce (one california blend and the other similar but with snow peas.)

Tilapia cutlets, Gortons, seasoned, were on clearance for $4.18. I bought two boxes, since we tried one yesterday and liked it. Each box has four servings.

Chicken breast skinless boneless tenders, the fresh kind, supposedly hormone free and blah blah blah, normally $5.99 for what appears a one pound package of raw chicken, plus $3 off because the use by date was tomorrow. They had two, and while I am sick of chicken, I bought them for the freezer.

Some Archer farm and Pacific soups were on sale. We bought about six total.

I also noticed we switched from selling single bananas for 24 cents each to 3 lbs for $1.67.

Bush's Vegetarian Beans were on sale 3 big cans for $5.

We also found dry black beans. I was very excited about this as I prefer to make my own beans. Not that I've had time recently. $1.39 for a pound. (versus 67 cents for a can!)

The processed foods, because yes I know 90% of these are packaged, is because I am going to DC next week and have daughter's dance recital this week and I want to have some stuff hubby can make.

For the recital, I hope to make granola but if I can't I bought Goldfish crackers ($1.99), Kashi dark chocolate almond granola bars ($2.99), and my personal pick peanut butter Pop Tarts ($1.99).

I bought Very Vanilla Soy Milk ($2.99), Silk coconut milk ($2.99), one pint half and half ($1.84).

Tea, herbal tea, New England coffee (price cut $5.99 a pound).

Tuna.3 large cans. In water. $2.34 each. Long grain brown rice, 2 bags, 1 pound each, 92 cents each.

Two Fresh Express Iceberg Garden Salad mix, $1.49 each. Two bottles of Goddess dressing. ($2.59 each)

Crazy rhubarb crumble

This is my crazy, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants cooking at its. At least, I hope it's the best. Looks good. Smells intoxicating. How can we go wrong? It's in the oven now...

Gayle gave us our annual batch of rhubarb. My husband started cutting and we got a yield of about seven cups. This recipe required three. The rest went into the freezer.

My daughter went to work making crumbs. I monitor her dairy intake so I reduced the butter and included some coconut oil. She didn't really listen when it came to "we're making crumbs, not stirring it into a solid mass" so I ended up with a wet solid mass that we had to keep adding solids to. But if I had to guess, these were the final ingredients:

- one cup unbleached white flour
- one quarter cup whole wheat flour
- about one third cup coconut flour
- about one third cup local raw honey
- about one cup sugar
- about one third cup brown sugar
- about two cups oats
- a ridiculous amount of cinnamon
- 1/2 stick butter
- close to 1/2 cup coconut oil

We greased the bottom of my huge Le Creuset skillet and sprinkled about half the crumbs into the bottom. To combat any residual over wetness, we sprinkled even more oats into the pan. Then we sprinkled a few cherries and about 1 cup strawberries into the pan. And then added three cups rhubarb.

Gradually, we heated the following ingredients to a near boil to make a sauce:
- About three tablespoons blackstrap molasses
- one cup water
- two tablespoons corn starch
- one cup sugar

We poured over the fruit. The we added more cinnamon. And dollops of unsweetened applesauce. And topped with the crumbs. And added about 1/4 cup sliced almonds on top of that.

Bake at 350 for 1 hour. I'll let you know if it's incredible. *I hope so*

Verdict: yum!

Crockpot Teriyaki Chicken

We're throwing a whole chicken in the crockpot, though we didn't take the guts out before we froze it. So, now, despite taking it out and putting it in the fridge yesterday, it was a wrestling match of man vs chicken to get the organs.

The sauce I'm starting with is the juice from one large can of pineapple chunks, some brown sugar and some low sodium soy sauce. I will throw the pineapple in and set the crock pot on low for about eight hours.

I also added some local raw honey.

Cherry Coke Coconut Cream Zoku Pops

The outside shell:

- flat cherry coke

The inside cream (about 4 pops worth)

- 1/4 cup coconut milk

- 1/4 cup half and half

- about 2 tablespoons lemon juice

- about 2 teaspoons raw honey

Monday adventures

In an effort to get back into the kitchen, I decided I would stop at Bottom Dollar as part of my morning errands. The selection of Bottom Dollar was completely due to location. I wanted to do my morning errands on foot.

My husband took the car to work and so I walked the children to school (as I do every school day). I continued from there (in the rain!) to Minuteman Press where I dropped off the last issue of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group newsletter for the 2012-2013 season. I will not be resuming duties in the fall.

I need to move forward. 

So I stopped at Bottom Dollar with $12 in my pocket. My checkbook has $50 left to make it until Friday...

I spent $3-and-some odd cents. Head of fresh broccoli, corn tortilla chips and a bag of Fresh Express iceberg garden salad mix.

I came home and made hummus. Got a little too much lemon juice in there, now it's runny. Have no more chick peas to mix in. Nor do I have tahini. I'm tempted to mix in some of the calamata olives left and some of the olive tapenade from Wegmans. Tossed in some zaatar seasoning. I could add roasted red pepper dip. That could work...

Got some harissa and zaatar bread from the freezer. Maybe I'll make couscous with raj el hanout. 

Today will produce some fine adventure...

Empty House Daddy Pasta

As you may know, we have been traveling. We left the house without much food... And guess what? We still didn't have any when we returned. No food shopping fairies!

So we made rotini with red sauce, supplemented with half a tomato found in the fridge, some of the Parmesan I got on clearance at Target and about 1/2 cup of browned ground beef I had in the freezer.