You guys! I am coming undone again reading all your lovely comments. Who would have thought so many people would care what my little family eats for dinner? But as the late, great Laurie Colwin once said (stop me if you’ve heard this one), “it’s not only the Great Works of mankind that make a culture. It is the daily things, like what people eat and how they serve it.” Which is why if you ever invite me into your kitchen I will attempt to snoop in your cupboards and peek into recipe boxes. I can’t help it. You’ve been warned.
Dinner around here has been mostly leftovers for the past few days - last night was the last of this sausage and lentil beauty, which actually improved with the addition of a fresh chunky Italian sausage (the lamb ones had been eaten, with lentils to spare), browned in the skillet with the lentils added to heat through as it finished cooking. Tonight – Mike just left to go jam (have I mentioned he’s a drummer boy?) without wanting to eat (we had plenty of party food at our nephew’s 3rd birthday party today) and I’m heading out to Ironwood later with A to see Magnolia Buckskin, and Ironwood has fantastic food, so I’m saving myself. As I type W is eating leftover rotini and these walnut trail bars, which I made for a show on portable ski snacks and I think are worth sharing.
Like most granola bars these are made with oats and nuts and seeds and dried fruit, bound together with sticky stuff and butter. Keeping with roughly these proportions, you could substitute any number of grains, nuts and seeds. The original recipe instructed pulsing the dried apricots, butter and honey in the food processor and then stirring the resulting paste into the dry ingredients, but that seemed too messy an endeavor, and what about all of you who don’t own food processors? So instead I chopped the apricots, melted the butter (replacing half of it with oil), and stirred that plus the honey into the dry ingredients. These do tend to stick to the pan (line it with parchment, or wrestle them out while they’re still warm) but are worth the effort - just like granola in bar form.
Walnut Granola Trail Bars
adapted from walnutinfo.com.
3 cups old fashioned (large flake) rolled oats
1/4 cup whole wheat or all-purpose flour (or try quinoa flour for gluten-free bars)
1/3 cups packed light brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1/2 cup dried cherries or cranberries
1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup sesame or flax seeds
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/4 cup canola or flax oil
1/2 cup honey or golden syrup
Preheat oven to 325°F. In a large bowl combine the oats, flour, brown sugar, baking soda and cinnamon. Stir in walnuts, cherries, apricots, chocolate chips, pumpkin seeds, coconut and sesame seeds.
Add the melted butter, oil and honey and stir until everything is well blended. Press evenly into a 9″ x 13″ baking pan that has been sprayed with nonstick spray or lined with parchment. Bake for 30 minutes, until golden. Cut into bars while still warm. Makes 24 bars.
Per bar: about 250 cal, 6 g pro, 14 g total fat (5 g sat. fat), 26 g carb, 3 g fibre, 10 mg chol, 85 mg sodium.
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January 03 2009 | breakfast and snacks | 27 Comments »
One day of silence seemed far too long, don’t you think?
(Last night, if you’re curious, we had quiche from Manuel Latruwe for dinner with leftover baked potatoes – the ones we had trucked downtown to keep my mom’s hands warm – chopped and sauteed with a bit of butter and oil and a good sprinkle of curry and chili powders to make spicy pan fries. Leftover baked potatoes in their skins make the best kind.)
Ironically, yesterday I spent more time on this blog than any of the 366 days before. I told myself I would not post, but I really did want to get the index sorted out for you. I thought I was far enough along, having spent a few evenings on it already. Nope. I spent most of the day and evening at it - W and I watched our three Wallace and Gromit movies twice (laptop going). Last night at 10pm, having not gone to bed until 5 the night before was I curled up with a movie and something boozy like I said I would? No, I was propped up in bed trying to plow through the last 50 or so posts so that I could finish the index for January first. My thinking was that since I’m leaving this site up, you could refer to it whenever you need to, which would be made infinitely easier with an index. Creating said index would be infinitely easier if I didn’t have to do it all manually on this Commodore 64.
So now, at 1:42 am the next night, where am I? Not sleeping – sitting in the dark trying to hammer out this $#!&%!@!! index, fueled (well) by Harvest Crunch.
(One night about 20 years ago S and I bought a box of Harvest Crunch and a carton of ice-cold milk at 7-11 while walking home from the bar and ate it on a park bench. I don’t remember how, but do recall attempting to create perforations in the full-sized box so that we could open it up like a mini box of cereal. It was the best HC ever.)
It is MIND BLOWING to look at that list of recipes in the index. Makes me wonder what I’ve accomplished each year before this one?
So HERE IT IS. A modern-day catalog of receipts. (Or you could click on “index of recipes” above.) It still needs some grooming – some of the links aren’t working, but don’t worry, I’ll check through each one. For some reason about a fifth of the links I put in disconnect the links before them.
On the upside, going through each page in order to catalog it is of course stirring up (pun intended) memories of good things I’ve eaten in the past three hundred or so days, and reminding me which I want to make again. Like that crispy-buttery-cheesy Ricotta Gnocchi, or Wor Won Ton Soup, Grilled Vegetable Lasagna, Roasted Squash and Ricotta Ravioli, Brown & Wild Rice Salad with Dried Fruit and Pecans and Veggie Samosas. In fact, maybe I’ll make Samosas and Pakoras to go with the jar of Apple-Plum Chutney I still have in my fridge. This week I am going to go spelunking in the freezer and see if we can do a culinary version of Julie Van Rosendaal, this is your life – a frozen retrospective of 2008.
I’ve had so much fun writing this blog and connecting with all of you that I am of course going to keep it going - my worry was that it might lose its appeal if I didn’t post every single night like I have this year. Then again, I’m not going to do a weekly review because my brain does not retain information for that long. Plus it’s too few and far between, and wouldn’t have the same spontaneity and flavour. So how does very often sound? I’m going to aim for every second night or so, like 3-4 times a week, maybe more since it appears I can’t tear myself away that easily.
And I have ideas for another food blog.
Don’t tell Mike.
January 03 2009 | leftovers | 39 Comments »
