Warming up - Granola

The weather here the last few days has been miserably wet and cold. In fall, when daylight is already beginning to make itself scarce, storms turn a day to perpetual twilight. Don't picture nice twinkly evening light when I say "twilight", picture daylight like dirty, wet concrete - dank and grey. There's been just enough wind to drive the cold into your skin. Blech.

I'm fighting back. With granola. A hugenormous batch of granola. The oven makes my kitchen toasty, and it smells almost as good as pie when it's baking. I stumbled upon an online recipe with good proportions and altered it beyond all recognition to become one of my favorite breakfasts. Here it is:

Suit Yourself Granola

This granola is lovely with milk or greek yoghurt. During cold weather, I add a bit of water or applesauce and reheat it - homemade hot granola is worlds better than hot cereal packets!

5 cups rolled oats (I use a combo of rolled oats, barley/wheat/rye flakes, ground flax seed - whatever strikes my fancy from the bulk section)
4 Tbs. vegetable oil (I've used canola oil too, since it's supposed to be better for you)
3/4 cup honey (or a mix of your sweetners of choice - honey, agave and maple syrup all work wonderfully)
3-4 cups of dried fruits and nuts (pecans, almond slivers, sunflower seeds, cranberries, apricots, cherries) Chopped or unchopped is up to you - size does affect how the nuts roast.

Measure your oats and grains into a large bowl - stirring can be messy, so allow yourself some extra room in your bowl choice. I add the ground flaxseed later in the process, as it tends to sift to the bottom of the bowl when mixed with the other dry ingredients.

Heat the oil and sweetener in a saucepan over medium heat. Different sweeteners respond differently to heat - watch carefully so as not to burn the sugars. You want the sweetener to dissolve and mix with the oil. Add spices to this liquid mixture if you'd like. Pour warm liquid mixture over the dry grains, and stir in thoroughly. Once everything seems evenly coated, add the ground flax seed - it will stick to the other grains now.At this point, I like to let my granola sit and stew in its own juices a bit - from a few hours to overnight (well covered). But you can spring right into baking if you'd like. There's a slight difference in texture and flavor - each method tastes great, but I notice a difference.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.


Stir nuts into the unbaked granola. Spread granola onto cookie sheets (I use one or two cookie sheets at a time, depending on how efficient I feel like being), and bake in the oven for 10 minute intervals. I stir the granola at least every ten minutes, and find that it takes 20-30 minutes for each batch. Baking time can be very dependent on the grains and nuts I've used. I use quite a bit of flax seed, and that tends to toast up easily, so I watch the color of the baking granola carefully, and set my timer for smaller increments if need be. Watch the edges - they tend to brown more quickly.

Mix any dried fruits into your granola after it comes out of the oven - preferably while it's still warm. I once made the mistake of baking a batch with dried fruit in it - the dried apricots were too chewy, and I almost cracked a tooth on the cranberries!

This recipe has proved to be quite forgiving. It doubles and triples nicely, and I am able to play with a combination of sweeteners. This last batch was a mix of the last of my agave and some local honey. I've used agave alone (it has a low glycemic index), as well as with maple syrup. The finished granola stores well in an airtight container, for a few weeks. I eat a lot of it, so it's not around for long.

* sniffle * hack *

Why are all my comfort foods the same color? Seriously, I ask myself this every time I get sick. I end up craving custard, or rice pudding, teas heavy with milk and honey, toast with butter, soups rich with chicken fat and lemon juice, heated apple juice with honey and a shot of citrus... Is anyone else like this? Why don't I get a hankering for red? Or spicy foods? Why does beige food make me (a person who loves color) feel warm and cosseted?

I've been battling this cold for days, and telling myself that it's just allergies, but it's making itself known in full force today. Maybe you're familiar with that weird euphoria you get when you have a lot to do at work and there are pestilent forces frolicking in your system. Today was not the day to make major decisions, or to use the office shredder. I hope I didn't do either...

I am looking forward to the corn chowder I'll pull out of the freezer tonight. I used homemade chicken stock, so it's rich and fatty. I'll add a bit of cream and some lemon to the broth once it's heated, and I have some leftover rolls to warm in the oven. I'll try to home cook my way to health. It will be a beige meal, but if that's what my germ addled brain decides I want, I'm not going to argue with it!

Photo credit M'soft Clipart

Baking therapy

On an average day, I find myself juggling (despite my childless, apartmented existence) a handful of issues that blur the lines between work and not-work. I can't tell anymore what's my baggage, and what's someone else's baggage dumped in my lap. Whether it's family, friends or coworkers, it aaalll adds up. Good jugglers make it seem like their hands just graze objects that are inherently airborne. I am not always a good juggler, sometimes treating issues like they were mosquitos, cream pies, or rotten tomatoes.

Generally, there's some kind of crash, and serious readjustment has to be scheduled. In this rural state where town is two streets, and the weather isn't always conducive to going out to play, I resort to complex kitchen behavior. It wears me out, but if I want to banish annoyances from my mind, AND there's good food when I'm done, it's just fine.

Bless a fresh hot roll from the oven with a pat of butter tucked into it. Bless my grandmother for her bread machine that makes that (and two dozen other rolls) possible with only 10 minutes of actual work on my part. No one cares whether your dough was kneaded by hand or by machine when you pull rolls out of their oven from being rewarmed. They decide to invite you over again very soon, they roll their eyes heavenward, they remember their own grandmothers.

Thanks be for the solid thump of a maple rolling pin as it lands. Picked up at an antique shop for a song by my mother, and oiled and babied by my father before it came to me at Christmas. It's sturdy and can cowboy up to wrangle pie dough like nobody's business. It sets a good example that I try to live up to...

Digital schmigital. I prefer my chicken timer and its little anticipatory ticks, like soft chicken clucks. Its ring sounds very much like the old rotary telephone at my folk's house when I was a kid. I have a digital timer, but it's more bossy than helpful, and gets used during lunch break to let me know when it's time to put my book down and walk back up the hill to work. My chicken sits on my stove top and does her thing in a most comforting manner.

Chicken pot pie... roasted chicken and vegetables, creamy gravy and a sour cream pie crust baked in my big cast iron skillet. The recipe from Cook's Illustrated is the best I've ever tried. When I am feeling pretty darn sorry for myself, this pot pie makes it all okay - both the labor and the eating of it.

I don't know how Steve feels about the general frenzy of flour and potholders in our teeny kitchen. I know he eats the outcomes quite happily. He is kind enough to go back to the store when I do something smart like pour half baked pumpkin pie all over the kitchen floor, and he often cuts butter into flour for pie crust or biscuits. His skills at "disposing of" baked goods that are cosmetically challenged are unparalleled. There is nothing quite like the impromptu (and sympathetic) sous chef.

Dairy and fiber is good for you

Work and weather have been challenging and draining lately. It's February in Vermont after all, so of course this is unavoidable. Flower shows bloom all through New England this time of year, and resorts sell weekend getaways to desperate yankees by using words like "hot tub" and "relax". Anything that seems the antithesis of slush or rock salt or snow shovels becomes what we all crave.

The sky was a gorgeous blue today, and waking up to sunshine was a nice change. Before I got too hopeful, the flaky d.j. on the radio warned me of subzero windchill temps. Instead of throwing an all out "I want spring now" temper tantrum, I sighed and packed my bag for a day without a walk home for lunch.

What does one bring to work with them to create a fake lunchtime getaway (when one is used to a five minute walk and then the peace and quiet of her favorite chair, a book, and good leftovers)? The recent Saveur magazine, chock full of butter, and the mohair shawl I'm working on. I have always been a firm believer in butter from my first plate of starch. I was further convinced of it's charms when I called my mother after a failed pie crust attempt (my first) - she immediately guessed that I'd tried to substitute margarine. "Throw it away" she said "start again, use butter". I did, and I've not batted an eye at not-butter for baking ever since. I'm the daughter of a woman raised on a dairy farm, it can't be helped. The mohair was from my mother too, and it was high time I got it on and off some needles. While I'd be trapped in my office, I did look forward to the good company of creamy reading and floaty fiber in my fingers.

It was a horribly drudgish morning, so I took an early lunch. At the appointed hour, I moved my chair into the sunny patch in my office, put my back to the door and my feet on the desk. I slurped down butternut squash soup while reading about the de-vilification of butter and it's return to the table (hallelujah!), and sat with a pile of whispery and warm mohair in my lap. Something about the soft click of needles blocks out the sounds of jammed copiers and coworkers talking at each other. It was lovely. At home tonight, I remember my lunch hour more than the rest of my blurred day, which is more than I'd hoped for.

Soup Weather

The air has an extra chill in it now. I walk home from work in blue dusk, and the glow in our windows isn't the late afternoon sunshine I'm used to, but the lamp I left on at lunch so I don't walk into a dark house at the end of the day. Once I've shut the door behind me, I'm compelled to do anything I can to dispel the impression of damp and chill in my bones. "Anything I can" generally means food... hot food. I light a few candles, turn on some music, start the dishwasher (because it gives off heat!), and start prepping for soup.

Soup season is also clean-out-the-freezer season. I don't just make an evening's worth of soup, I make enough to feed ourselves and company plus a future meal (or two). I make everything this way, a throw back to watching my mother cook for our family of five. I think I'm actually incapable of cooking for two. I don't recall ever having done it. Unless you count popovers (ah, buttery eggy goodness), but I'm not so sure that one should eat a half dozen popovers in one sitting. The freezer fills up slowly but surely, and when we've had a full day of work, run errands and have collapsed on the couch to ask each other "what's for dinner?", we have a solution. I'm going to be clever this winter, and put a contents list on the freezer door. I'm sure if you asked the Better Half what was in there, he couldn't tell you if his life depended on it. There are really only two things he could ever identify in our freezer - his paint palette, and ice cream. We don't generally keep ice cream about since dessert inhalation is another family trait of mine.

On the burners this week:
Roasted Potato Soup
Thai Chicken Soup

The potato soup is a favorite I stumbled on in a magazine somewhere. I've been making it for so long, I've since forgotten where I first saw it. I cut up yukon gold potatoes (these seem to have the creamiest flavor), sweet onions and apples (a mix of tart and sweet usually). The potatoes and the onions go into an oiled casserole dish for roasting. I dry-roast fennel seeds in a small cast iron skillet until they start to smell fragrant, and then I grind them. To the ground fennel I add cumin, and salt and pepper to taste. I toss the potatoes and onions with these spices and some olive oil, lay the apple quarters on top and pop it into the oven to roast. I find a higher temperature works better - the onions caramelize a bit, and you end up with nice roasty chunks in the soup - so 400 or 425. Roast until the potatoes are cooked through, stirring occasionally. The apples cook more quickly, so I put them in after the first stir, keep checking them, and when they're mushy I gently scoop them out with a spoon. Once they've cooled, the skins should come off fairly easily. When everything is cooked through, the apple flesh, potatoes and onions go into a blender with chicken broth (I've tried veggie broth, and it works just fine, but doesn't have as creamy a flavor). I deglaze the casserole dish with chicken broth, scraping the roasty bits into the blender as well. A squeeze of fresh lemon (to taste) helps to keep the soup from being too bland, and I highly recommend it. The soup can be as chunky or as smooth as you'd like it to be depending on the amount of broth and how much you puree the ingredients. This is often a Sunday afternoon activity for me, as it heats the house up nicely, makes everything smell lovely, and we end up with a very hearty meal. I like it best with a side of apple slices and gruyere or sharp cheddar.

The chicken soup is a recent experiment from a new cookbook called "400 Soups". It's full of typical Thai ingredients - coconut milk, chicken stock, lime leaves, lemongrass, fish sauce, ginger. There is a local Thai restaurant that serves the creamiest tom yam or tom kah. From first tastes, this is not quite that (the chicken stock I used seemed a little on the heavily flavored side), but still pretty good. The true test is how well it reheats and/or freezes.

Leftovers will be bundled up for the freezer (which already contains beef and onion broth and some chicken gravy). I usually fill a few small containers too, since I work close enough to walk home for lunch. The fun part is identifying mysterious soup at the end of the winter. Freezer labels never stick to plastic containers well or they never come off, no matter how much you scrub - a batch of my mother's applesauce used to say "spag. sauce 8/1/89". Plastic bags can be a bit awkward to store if there's too many. My memory isn't what it once was, and mystery soup or sauce has become a regular problem in our house. Twine and paper tags? Color coded dots? Or we could just content ourselves with a little mystery in our lives, and find out what we're having for dinner when it thaws.

More PIE please

My new PIE cookbook, which I've posted about, still has not left my living room, where it resides as deliciously fascinating reading material. This has got to be the summer of pie... not only did I get to have Heather's key lime (with the best crumb crust I've ever had), but I bought that cookbook, read a history book on the American kitchen, and just saw a pie oriented movie.

I've been reading Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America. If you grocery shop, if you have ever eaten home cooking, been a home cook, hate to cook, regularly visit a grocery store, or ever watched Julia Child on television, you'll want to read bits of this book out loud to everyone around you. Okay, I wanted to, maybe you're more polite than that. For example, lima bean sticks. Gross yes, but intriguing right? The author's style is amazingly readable and conversational, taking you directly into America's kitchens - often on the back of the food marketing industry or cooking personalities. You get a sense of the women themselves in their earnest and direct letters to magazines and newspapers. It will change the way you see food marketing (for a whole week, I felt like the products in the grocery store needed to just pipe down). It may give you hope in this nation of fast food. It will cause you to fondly recall the remnants of a 50's kitchen as they existed (or exist) in your own life. I was heartened to read that cakes and pies at the time fell under the realm of personal touch, not appropriate for box mix conversion. I am not a cake baker, but the thump of a rolling pin on a wooden board soothes my soul, and a pie never fails to impress (even if you bought the crust!).

No sooner did I finish this book, than a coworker recommended the movie Waitress. It is not a cute little movie - it's a damn good story instead, with just the right sweet and tart sentiments. The pies are wild, the characters are sometimes wilder, and none of it is predictable in the usual sugary way of romances. The women are strong and independent, life is unfair, and being a baking whiz in the kitchen does not mean you are the mother of all mankind. Just a great movie - two days later, I'm still playing it over in my head.

While we were at the movie, Alex call and left a message that was along the lines of "come and get the rhubarb from my garden right now!". And rhubarb really only has two uses - mixed w/ sweeter fruit for a pie, or blended into sauce to pour over vanilla ice cream.

Mmm, summer of pie...

Pee Eye Ee

I bought another cookbook. Various and sundry social plans had been scrubbed by one thing or another during the week, and I was feeling sorry for myself. In an attempt to offset grouchiness, we traipsed downtown for maple beers (one sign of spring around here, even if nothing else seems in synch), a good burger and a stop at the bookstore.

We wandered, not so aimlessly... magazines, fiction, stuff on sale, craft inspiring reads... ah, cookbooks. If I close my eyes in that aisle, and take a deep breath, I can almost smell the test kitchens. Just like (most of) the food that they help bring into being, cookbooks soothe my soul. This one said PIE in big letters on it's big, fat, thick spine. I like to eat pie, but I also really like to make pie. Bless you Ken Haedrich, for this book. I will spend as much time reading it as I will trying out the recipes. So many recipes! Presented in a way that makes the art of pie accessible to anyone with a hankering to make one.

Mmm. Pie...

Spring Eats

It's springtime in New England (or so they tell us - don't look out the window), and my thoughts turn to seasonal goodies. Not just chocolate bunnies and jellybeans, but the earthier stuff... asparagus, fiddle heads, rhubarb. Grilling season quickly trumps these foods for me, so I'm reminding myself to relish them this year.

Asparagus is at my grocery store year-round these days, which makes me a bit sad. I miss the days when the appearance of those green spears in the produce aisle were a herald of spring along with the first robin. When asked why I ate things at my grandmother's table that I wouldn't eat at home, I swore to my mother that the asparagus from my grandparent's garden tasted better. I don't think she believed me, and why would she? I'm the child that told her I was too full to finish my dinner, but my ability to eat sweets was not impaired because my "dessert stomach" was not full.

I like to cook asparagus with salt, butter and lemon. I chop any leftovers to stir into potato salad with chives and dill. Everything's better with cream or butter in it, and I think dairy and asparagus compliment each other nicely. I mix the spears with grated asiago cheese and marscapone, in a buttered casserole dish. Some bread crumbs (I like panko for its crunch and lightness), pine nuts and a bit more cheese on top and baked until heated through - heaven. You can also cook the tenderest part of the spears in butter and white wine, puree, and reheat (adding cream to taste of course). It looks healthy and springy, but is rich and creamy like soup should be during mud season.

Fiddleheads are good in a foil packet with butter, salt and pepper, tossed on the grill to steam. Don't tell my mother I eat local greens (some of them right out of the woods!) now. I gave her so much grief as a kid when it came to vegetables.

Oh that I could match my grandmother's rhubarb pie. There's a trick to solving the pie soup problem (gelatin, tapioca or flour), but I've not mastered it. Rhubarb sauce over vanilla ice cream is all I can manage, and it's pretty good. The sweet tart smell of cooking rhubarb reminds me of late afternoon sit-down dinners with my grandparents, and the flower patterned tea cups for coffee that were set out next to dessert. Being a "grownup" brought about two changes in my life - I got a cup and saucer of my own at my grandmother's table, and my mother no longer felt she must set a good example and served pie and coffee for breakfast. I highly recommend fruit pie, hot coffee and a good book on a sunny front stoop in the morning.