making granola

I've told the story before about my friend Katie and the brunch she threw one Saturday morning at her house in Brooklyn. Everyone had brought their favorite breakfast foods, and the table was filled with streudels and donuts and all kinds of deliciousness. But I kept going back for the granola! Katie shared her recipe with me and I've been making it ever since. It makes a perfect breakfast with a scoop of greek yogurt, some milk, and whatever fruit or berries you have on hand. 

Katie's Amazing Granola

This granola makes a TON, two full sheet pans to be exact. I don't have a bowl big enough to fit everything at once, so I make mine in two big bowls and divide all the ingredients in half.

In a large bowl (or two!) mix the following ingredients:

 10 cups of old fashioned rolled oats (buy from the bin at your local health food store..)
2 cups of whole wheat flour
2 cups of wheat germ (store in your fridge between batches)
2 cups of shredded coconut
2 cups chopped pecans and/or almonds
1 tablespoon salt

In a separate bowl, mix the following: 

4 tablespoons vanilla
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup of oil (I use Canola)
2 cups honey (if you use the same cup you used for the oil, the honey should slide right out)

Divide the wet mixture between your two bowls of granola and mix well.

Spread your granola in two large, shallow pans. Bake at 250 until deep golden and almost dry, about 2 hours. Every 30 minutes rotate your pans and stir and crumble the granola with a big wooden spoon (the outside edges will brown first, so you want to mix everything around so it all cooks evenly). 

When it's all nice and golden and you've broken up most of your big chunks, remove from the oven and let cool (I leave mine on the counter overnight). Store tightly covered or in the refrigerator if you have room.

Teacher Appreciation Week is coming up and I guest posted over at Skip to My Lou about giving granola as a gift. I like to fill old mason jars with granola and tie a ribbon around the lid. Use this printable PDF to make a label you can personalize with your teacher’s name (it also includes some of the ingredients in case there are any allergies).  I print mine on full page Avery shipping labels, cutting around each circle with scissors. A thoughtful way to let your teachers know you appreciate all they do. I've been known to give jars of this away to friends on their birthdays as well.

st. patty's day mint brownies

I've been on the hunt for a good mint brownie recipe since my college days, where you could pick one up at the cafeteria most days of the week. So when my friend Jen made these delicious brownies for a baby shower, I hunted her down for the recipe the very next day. They've been a favorite ever since and are the perfect dessert to follow our traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner. Have you tried Mark Bittman's recipe, by the way? You boil everything per usual, (he skewers his cabbage wedges so they stay together) and at the very end you pull everything out of the pot and bake it in a 300 degree oven for about 15 minutes so it's not all soggy. It's a game changer. I love it with a little horseradish mixed with sour cream. But back to the brownies..

Jen's Mint Brownies

The brownie base on these is more of a Texas sheet cake, which I love, but purists may prefer a more traditional brownie base, then duplicating the two layers on top. 

2 1/4 sticks butter, melted 
3/4 cup cocoa
2 1/4 cups sugar
6 eggs, slightly beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 7/8 cups flour
1/8 teaspoon salt 
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Mix together butter and cocoa. Add sugar. Stir in eggs and vanilla. Add flour and salt; mix well. Pour into a greased jelly roll pan (aka large cookie sheet with edges). Bake 15 minutes. Do not overcook; if you see any air bubbles, pop with a toothpick and smooth down. Cool completely, then frost with Mint Frosting.

Mint Frosting

4 cups powdered sugar
8 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon peppermint extract
3 drops of green food coloring
4 tablespoons milk (or as much needed to get to a spreadable consistency)

Mix all ingredients, then spread in a thin layer on top of cooled brownies. Work fast as it dries quickly. Let the mint frosting layer set for about a half hour, then top with chocolate frosting.

Chocolate Frosting

3 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 square of butter (10 tablespoons)

Melt together carefully in the microwave (cook for 30 seconds at a time, stirring between each round until fully melted and combined). Pour evenly over mint brownies and carefully spread until you reach all the edges of the pan. Put brownies in the fridge for 20-30 minutes or until chocolate layer is fully set, then cut into squares. Keep extras in the fridge.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

R.O.D. (Rules of Dinner)

Jenny over at Dinner A Love Story asked me to share our rules for family dinner. My favorite is Rule No. 2 "The Table is a Safe Place". This was a phrase my mother invented, and she used it often at our dinner table when I was growing up. Dinner time is sacred, and only nice things are said at the table. You may want to remind your son to put his bike away, or talk to your daughter about her lackluster performance in Algebra.. but wait until after dinner. Siblings don’t bicker, parents don’t lecture. The table is a safe place.

You can check out all 10 of our Rules of Dinner here. Dinner: A Love Story has become one of my favorite places for new recipes and just great ideas about family dinner in general. Jenny always gives recipes in a kind of honest short hand that I love. So in her honor, I will share one of our favorite dinners this summer.. Roasted Salmon with Fresh Corn Salad.

Roasted Salmon (adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman)

Preheat your oven to 450. Melt 2-3 tablespoons of butter and a little olive oil in an oven safe roasting pan. Add a handful of chopped parsley or minced shallots if you have it. Place a salmon fillet (with the skin still on) in the butter/oil, flesh side down. Roast in the oven about five minutes, then flip the salmon and roast 4 to 5 minutes longer until it feels done. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper and serve immediately. Buttery and delicious and my new favorite way to cook salmon.

Fresh Corn Salad (from Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Cookbook)

Boil 4 to 5 ears of corn in salted water for just a few minutes, drain in cold water. Set aside to cool. Finely chop about 1/2 a red onion and add in the corn kernels (I cut them off the cob with a knife right into the bowl). Add a few tablespoons of cider vinegar (I've also used red wine vinegar in a pinch), and an equal amount of olive oil (like 2-3 tablespoons of each). Season with salt and pepper. Grab a handful of fresh basil leaves and roll them like a cigar and cut them into little ribbons. Sprinkle the basil on right before serving.

Serve with some fresh fruit and maybe some good crusty bread. This is a meal that everyone in our house likes.. and one that only requires about 10 minutes of actual cooking! Win-win!

my favorite cookbooks

I buy cookbooks.. a lot. Sometimes I wonder why I buy so many, especially now that you can download more recipes off the internet than you could ever actually make in a lifetime. Perhaps it's because I design books for a living, so I get suckered in by a pretty title page or a really great cover. Despite the plethora of cookbooks that gather dust on my shelf, here are the five cookbooks I reach for the most:

Everyday Food: Great Food Fast  From the kitchens of Martha Stewart Living
Everyday Food, the magazine, launched while I was working at Martha Stewart Living and so all the employees got free issues each month. You can see from my early issues, above, how well-loved they are. Post-its flag the recipes I use most often so I can easily go back and find them. Great Food Fast is a nice collection of some of the best Everyday Food recipes, organized by season. These aren't mind blowing recipes, but they work great for casual dinners at home. (And I should mention that I think the recipes from the early years of EDF are better than the later years..)

Time for Dinner   By Cookie editors Pilar Guzman, Jenny Rosenstarch, and Alanna Stang
If you aren't reading the blog Dinner: A Love Story, written by Jenny Rosenstarch, you really need to be. She's got a great handle on family dinners, especially when it comes to the little people in your life. And she's funny. (I'm still laughing about the memo she wrote to her husband about packing school lunches.) Time for Dinner is a great collection of recipes, but my favorite part is the "I want to use what I already have" chapter which shows recipes that use common ingredients you probably have sitting in your fridge (or need to use before they go bad). And I love the Strategic Sunday Dinner section, a great way to make one big meal on the weekend and use the leftovers for a meal or two throughout the week.

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day  By Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois
This book has gotten considerable attention in the blogosphere (and for good reason). My copy automatically flips open to The Master Recipe on page 26, which I make every few weeks. The dough is ridiculously easy to whip up, you throw it in a big tupperare container, then let it rise, then store it in your fridge and grab some dough whenever you want fresh bread for dinner that night. (You just need to remember to take the dough out of the fridge about an hour and a half before dinner... shape your loaf, let it rise and then bake.) The Master Recipe makes 4 small round loaves, and my family of four can easily eat a whole loaf in one sitting. The dough stays good in the fridge for just shy of two weeks, so I usually make 2 loaves at a time, people don't seem to complain when you hand them a loaf of homemade bread fresh from the oven.

How to Cook Everything  By Mark Bittman
I've been a fan of Bittman's Minimalist column in The New York Times for years. Simple recipes, delicious results. He proves that cooking doesn't need to be overly complicated to be good. How To Cook Everything is kind of like my cooking bible. I pull it out for any question I might have, like "What do I do with this kale?" or "I need a different way to cook shrimp" or "What's the best way to roast these tomatoes?". I like to think of him as that really smart friend you often call upon for advice. In fact the motto for my kitchen is often WWBT: What Would Bittman Do?

The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook  By Ina Garten
I did a few photoshoots with Ina back when we ran her entertaining column in Martha Stewart Living. It was always nice to get out of the city and spend the day in East Hampton. I quickly became a fan of her cookbooks, and own most of them, but this is the one I pick up most often. Ina's recipes just seem to work for me. They turn out just like I expect them to.. and really, what more do you want from a recipe? My favorites are: Grilled Lemon Chicken with Satay Dip (pg. 48), Sun-Dried Tomato Dip (pg. 54), Turkey Tea Sandwiches (pg. 58), Cheddar Corn Chowder (pg. 74), French Potato Salad (pg. 96), and the Fresh Corn Salad (pg. 101). Oh, and don't forget the Coconut Cupcakes (pg. 175).

The Best Recipe  By the editors of Cook's Illustrated magazine
I was given this book for a wedding present by one of the food editors at work, which is about as good an endorsement a cookbook can receive in my world. It looks like this edition is no longer in print, they've upgraded to The NEW Best Recipe which includes even more recipes, so you'll still be in good shape. Here's what the folks at America's Test Kitchen do best, taking a recipe for something like Strawberry Shortcake and then dissecting every part of it. They try it with baking powder vs. baking soda, they add a little buttermilk or heavy cream, they test the recipe with four different kinds of flour.. and in the end they end up with a recipe they consider "the best". The recipes can be a little time-consuming, and sometimes the ingredients seem a little fussy, but the end result never lets me down. (I've also heard good things about The Best 30-Minute Recipe but have yet to try it.. perhaps my next cookbook purchase?)

A little tip for those of you just starting to cook: I write all over my cookbooks, marking in the margins the date I try the recipe along with notes like "Delicious! Try with more thyme." or "Next time add a little more sugar." It helps me remember the little changes I want to try next time I make that recipe. You can tell the recipes I really love because they are covered in notes: ingredients have been slightly altered, measurements changed, and there are little notes next to each step.

I'd love to hear about the cookbooks you use most often, the ones that are spattered with tomato sauce and have wrinkly pages... you know the ones I mean.

the grocery list

 
I thought I'd spend a little time this week talking about food (a topic I usually leave to the food blogs). Particularly how to feed your family. I've realized over the years that I much prefer having a solid plan of action rather than opening the fridge at 5 PM trying to rustle up some dinner.

You can read about my approach to meal planning over on Design Mom today. You can even download my grocery list. It's a simple system that really works for me. You plan four meals a week, Monday through Thursday. (Friday is date night, and Saturdays we eat pizza during Movie Night.. Sundays are usually dinner with my extended family or friends and require their own shopping if we're hosting.) Because I buy different things at different stores, I have sections for 4 stores on my grocery list. The biggest section is our main grocery store (where we buy most of our packaged foods and cleaning items) and the other sections are Trader Joe's (we love their milk, their premade pizza dough and their healthy snacks), Costco (for fruit and some types of meat), and Henry's (where we buy most of our produce). If you frequent different stores, you can download this editable grocery list and type in the names of the stores you shop at.

We'll start with my approach to meal planning and later this week we'll talk about my favorite cookbooks (you can see a few in the pile above). And I'd love to hear about the things that work for you. How do you approach meal planning? How do you manage to eat dinner as a family despite busy schedules? Any tips for getting my 5 year old to start eating everything on her plate?

a healthy start to the new year

Most New Years resolutions include something about health.. but I often lose my focus after a few weeks. I get busy and forget that I was trying not to eat sugar, or that I promised I would work out more. This year I'm trying something new.. thanks to my dad.

My dad has been avidly studying nutrition the past few years. He's read over 100 books on the subject, scours the web everyday for interesting articles, and has even started reading medical journals (just for fun!). I live nearby, so alot of our conversations start out "I was just reading this great book.." or "Did you see that cheese article in the NY Times?"

He's taught me a lot, and I've been encouraging him to start his own blog for quite some time to share his wealth of knowledge. It's now up and running and it's called Word of Wisdom Living.

Last week started one year of "Healthy Changes", one thing you can change in your diet or lifestyle each week. He'll post one each Monday for the rest of the year. The first Healthy Change is about drinking soda, and you can read it here. This week's change has to do with fried foods. You can even download a little sign each week to help remind you.

The blog is a family affair. I'll be helping him along, suggesting topics and doing the design work. My little sister does the photography. My mom acts as editor and cheerleader. There will be recipes (like this one for a healthy breakfast) and book reviews, links to nutrition blogs and interesting news articles.. lots of little ways to make your family healthier, one step at a time.

I know I'm biased, but my dad is a really smart guy.. and I think we could all learn a lot from him. Here's to a happy (and healthy) 2011!

potted pumpkin pies

My friend asked me to make little potted pumpkin pies for her witch party last weekend. They were super easy to make and look great in a big stack! I think these would be a nice addition at a Halloween party or to add a little twist to Thanksgiving dinner.

Make your favorite pumpkin pie recipe (I used this recipe from Everyday Food). I doubled the recipe which gave me enough filling for roughly 20 little mason jars. Fill the jars, stopping about 3/4" from the top. Bake at the usual temperature, but start watching them carefully after about 25 minutes since they won't take as long to bake as a pie. Pull them out when the center seems set (mine took about 35 minutes). Let cool for an hour or so, then throw them in the fridge while you make the whipped cream.

The whipped cream recipe includes a bit of unflavored gelatin, which you dissolve in some water and then fold in. I worried this would change the texture of the cream, but not to worry, the whipped cream was delicious and the gelatin helps it keep its shape so it doesn't fall the way ordinary cream would when left out for a bit. Spoon some cream into each of your jars, filling all the way up to the top, and screw on your lid. Return your jars to the fridge until you are ready to serve. These can be made up to a day ahead.

A few shortbread cookies or ginger snaps would be nice for a little crunch.

favorite things

My friends have started a great tradition of throwing a "Favorite Things" party twice a year. A week before Baby M was born, we gathered at my friends home for the Spring party (they also have a Winter party in early December). Funny enough, I think this may be the only photo of my pregnant belly.

Here's how it works: Each person brings their favorite thing (anything you like.. your favorite lip gloss, favorite kitchen tool, favorite gift wrapping supply, a gift card for your favorite frozen yogurt, etc.). It can't cost more than $6, and each person brings five of the same thing. When you arrive at the party, you write your name on five slips of paper and throw them in a big bowl. The bowl is passed around, and each person takes five names (making sure you don't pick your own.. or two of the same name).

One at a time each person introduces their favorite thing and then reads the five names they picked from the bowl, passing out their gift to those five guests. After everyone at the party has presented their favorite thing, each person should end up with five gifts to take home. It's always interesting to see what people choose, and some guests have started to bring a notepad and pen to jot down what people love (this is how I was introduced to Trader Joe's Sea Salt Chocolate Caramels, which are nearly my undoing each winter).

This year I decided to bring basil plants as my favorite thing. It's always nice to cook with fresh herbs, but I hate buying a little pack at the store, using a few leaves, and then tossing the rest away when they go bad. Basil plants are inexpensive (these were $2.99) and somehow they stay alive for quite a while in my yard, despite my lack of a green thumb. I printed up some of my favorite recipes that use fresh basil and included that, along with a little jar of pre-made pesto (I like Trader Joe's version).

You can download my favorite basil recipes here.. (These are printed four to a page, so you can print them out, and add them to your recipe file.) And if you have a favorite basil recipe you'd like to share, feel free to comment, my basil plant is producing like crazy right now!

heavenly hash

It's jam making time around these parts. Around May I start watching the price of berries at the store, and usually in late May or early June, berries are so cheap you can buy loads of them for a dollar or less a pound. Last year we stuck with strawberry jam, and it was delicious. We ate our last jar just a few weeks ago.

This year, in addition to making five batches of strawberry jam, JR decided we should try our hand at making Heavenly Hash. For those of you who aren't lucky enough to have a Grandma Hellewell, Heavenly Hash is a jam my grandma makes which is a combination of strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. And it lives up to it's name.. the stuff is amazingly good.

Grandma happened to call me yesterday and when I asked her if she had made her Heavenly Hash yet, she told me she likes to use boysenberries instead of blackberries. My grandfather always had a large garden in their backyard, and he made sure to grow enough fruit to make jam in the spring. Grandpa passed away several years ago, but there is still one boysenberry bush producing, which means Grandma can still make at least one batch of Heavenly Hash.

We used blackberries in ours and it turned out pretty good... not as good as Grandma's, but not bad for our first attempt. Both JR and I think boysenberries would be better, but they are a little hard to come by. What is a boysenberry, you ask? Boysenberries are a cross between a raspberry, a blackberry and/or a loganberry. And the story of the boysenberry and how it came to be is one worth telling.

Turns out a man named Rudolph Boysen had been experimenting with a new kind of berry, but gave up after a few years. Walter Knott, a local farmer and a bit of a berry expert, heard about the berries and tracked down Boysen, who had since sold his farm. Knott want back to the original farm, found a few of the struggling plants still alive, and transplanted them back to his farm where he nursed them back to fruit bearing health. He named the berry after its creator: the Boysen-berry. Knott soon went on to find his own success, first at a roadside stand where he and his wife made jams and pies using the boysenberry; later with a chicken restaurant; and then for the famous theme park Knott's Berry Farm which they began in the '40's as a way to entertain people who were waiting for a table at the chicken restaurant. According to the Knott's Berry Farm website, all boysenberries in the world can trace their roots back to the original Knott farm.

My grandma says boysenberry plants can be tricky, and that she isn't patient enough to baby them the way my grandfather did. One more thing to add to the garden I am planning in my head... we'll have to carve out a little place for the boysenberries.

a healthy new year

I had a few too many balls in the air this year come Christmas, so a couple of things had to get bumped to the week after Christmas. The Christmas cards became New Years cards, the gifts for the teachers were delivered after the holiday break instead of before it, etc. It was actually a nice change of pace since that week between Christmas and New Years is usually a pretty quiet one around my home: the kids are happily playing with their new gifts from Santa, there's nothing on the calendar besides visiting with family and taking down the Christmas tree.

I'm new to having kids in school, and I'm still figuring out what makes a nice teacher gift, but I did see what the other kids were bringing before the break: lots of candy and sweets. Now I enjoy those things too, but I get a little overloaded with sugar during the holidays, and by January..  I'm ready for something nice and healthy.

Which brings me to this delicious recipe for Granola. A few years back, my friend Katie hosted a brunch at her home and made this granola. Even though her table was filled with delicious breakfast treats, I kept going back for more granola. It's that delicious! And now we make it all the time. This recipe makes a big batch, so we share some with our friends and keep the rest in the fridge. Topped with a few big spoonfuls of  Greek yogurt, a splash of milk, and a big pile of berries, it is the perfect breakfast.