Granola! I Love You!

Today was a good day for baking. It was cool enough outside to leave the backdoor open with the screen shut so the oven wouldn't heat up the down stairs.

But before my baking fun began, I went to Sun Harvest, which is like a mini Central Market, to grab some Fenugreek and check out the bulk bins. Boy did I hit the jackpot! Well, that's exaggerating a bit, I just happened to find a few items that central market didn't carry in bulk. I snagged a mother-load of organic rolled oats, some barley (for baby food), sliced almonds (mmmmmm) and lots of wheat germ. The wheat germ was definitely the best buy. I got about one and a half times as much as you get at the grocery store for about $4 for only $0.55!! Woot!! Sorry I get excited about bargains. It runs in the family......

So back to the granola. I got the idea a couple of days ago to make my own granola bars when I realized I would have to go back to the grocery store to get more for Chris because he is working seven days straight this week and I didn't buy enough during my last grocery visit. So I went to one of my favorite recipe websites (http://www.allrecipe.com/) and browsed about the different ways to make it.

It really isn't as complicated as it sounds. You just mix everything up and slap it in a baking pan. I don't know why I assume most things would be more difficult to make from scratch. Perhaps the food industry has something to do with it. Have you seen the commercial stating that peeling a potato is hard work??? It takes like five minutes to peel enough potatoes for mashed potatoes! Slimey corporations.... Sorry. Tangent.

So yeah. I did it. I made my own granola bars and they're pretty yummy. They turned out a little crispy for my taste, but that's my fault for not checking on them. Mine are flavored with honey, craisins and almond slices. Oh boy, tastey and healthy! Don't you just want to grab one?

Test Kitchen #2

Well, I did more cooking from scratch last night. I made chimichangas! Which I have done one other time, but they weren't too fantastic. But last nights batch was awesome. Chris was very impressed, which is hard to do. So Hooray for me!!!

These had beans, meat and cheese, and yes I do mean my homemade "refried" beans that are not fried. Devon even liked them, until she heard me call it a chimichanga instead of burrito. Why that made a difference I'll never know, but she sure did finish it.

Test Kitchen #1

Well, for the last couple of months I have been collecting tons of new recipes and many of them oddly enough call for the ingredients of fall. Such as squashes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, mmmm. I have had a butternut squash hanging out in my cupboard for a few weeks and I've been pretty anxious to use it in something.

Monday, for some insane reason, I decided to go ahead and cut it up to encourage me to use it soon. So for dinner Monday night I decided we were having pasta with butternut squash and brown butter sauce. So I take the cubed squash out of the refrigerator and pop it in the oven and start cooking the pasta and the sauce. Well, I wasn't very confident with how the sauce turned out so I didn't use it. I just put a couple of spoon fulls of butter on the pasta after I drained it and then added the squash and mixed a pinch of nutmeg.

The verdict. I think the squash should have been cubed a bit smaller (my bad) so it would have cooked a little more tender. BUT it did look so appealing that Devon popped a piece of squash in her mouth without me having to make a bargain for her to try it. She said she didn't like the way it felt in her mouth. Once again my bad. But she did eat all of her pasta which had little tiny bits of squash on it from mixing, so haha she ate it without knowing it, even if it was just a little bit.

I liked it, but I didn't eat all the squash because it wasn't cooked enough for my liking. Oh well, next time I will know better, which is good because hopefully next time Chris won't be sick and will maybe try it. Good thing I worked the kinks out. Now I just need to get a handle on cooking sauces. Anybody want to volunteer to teach me?