Coconut Banana Nut Muffin RECIPE

Here's an easy, yummy recipe, for your Sunday morning.  

I love coconut and there's some evidence that coconut oil might have better fats than butter.  Truthfully, I just love the flavor.  You can subsitute an equal amount of vegetable oil if you don't have coconut oil, but you won't get that subtle, yummy coconut flavor.

 Coconut oil is generally solid at room temperature, so just pop it in the microwave for a few seconds to liquify it.

 Combine the wet ingredients.

Combine the dry ingredients.

Gently fold the wet into the dry.

 This is a fairly thick batter, so I use a cookie batter scooper to transfer the batter to the oiled muffin tin.

Makes for even muffins.

 Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown.

 Eat them while they're still warm.

 Yum.

Strawberry Goat Cheese Salad

I'm so excited to be guest posting as part of Roselee of Jane of All Trades, Summer Salad Series.  If you haven't checked it out yet, it's definitely worth a stop over.  
When it's hot and muggy out, who wants to turn on the stove or oven?  The perfect reason for a summer salad.

Here's what you'll need to make my Strawberry Goat Cheese Salad with a honey ginger dressing.

SALAD
salad greens
1 1/2 cups fresh strawberries, quartered
1 log of goat cheese
1/2 toasted pecans, finely chopped
1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion

DRESSING 
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon water
1/2 inch fresh ginger, peeled and crushed
fresh ground black pepper to taste

Slice the goat cheese into rounds.

Gently roll the rounds in the ground pecans.

Place on a plate and refrigerate while you prepare the dressing.

Mix the oil, honey and water in a measuring cup. 

Grind up your ginger.  I use a mortar and pestle, but you could also shred it. 

Squeeze the ginger in with the oil, honey and water.  Whisk in a little black pepper.

Toss the salad greens, strawberries, onions, and any leftover pecans with the dressing.

Top with the goat cheese rounds.  Pair it with a nice grilled chicken breast and you've got a great summer meal.  

Go check out all of Roselee's great summer salads here. 

What's your favorite summer salad?

Easter Cookies and the News...

 Growing up, one of my closest friends would invite me over to celebrate Easter with her very large, very Italian family. I decided to try to recreate the delicious Easter cookies I looked forward to enjoying at her house ever year.

 I used this recipe and made mine with almond extract.  I packed some up to share with friends.  
These cookies are soooo yummy.  Light and almondy, with a sweet icing. 

The perfect Easter treat.

And, if you haven't popped over to Made-By-Rae yet, you haven't heard the news....

my Simple White Pleats top won the Reader's Choice for Week 1!  And only by a small margin, so thank you to all of you who voted!

There will be a whole new batch of tops next week, so be sure to check back.  And keep your eye on all the great submissions in the Flickr pool. 

Happy Easter!

Cheddar Sage Biscuits

 This week, I accidentally bought 2 containers of sage.  I was making this squash soup, and somehow bought sage at 2 different stores.  I didn't want it to go to waste, so I thought I'd try my hand at some biscuits.

I used a basic cheese biscuit recipe and added the chopped sage to the butter to help bring out some of the flavor.  

2 cups white flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 stick unsalted butter-melted

1 cup milk

1 cup shredded sharp cheddar

chopped fresh sage

Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Add the butter/sage, milk and cheese and mix until just combined. Drop by spoonful onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet and bake at 425F for 15 minutes. 

Butter, cheese, fresh herbs....what could possibly be yummier.

There will be more of these in our future.  Basil parmasan.  Rosemary gruyere. 

What will you put in yours?

From Farm to Fridge - Pickle Recipe

We've been busy picking lots of veggies at our local CSA.

And also been busy making pickles. My kids love to help and love eating all kinds of pickled veggies.

I'm sure there are lots of recipes out there....here's what you need to do it our way.

2 cups water
1 cup white vinegar
3 tablespoons of salt
about 3 cloves of sliced garlic (more or less to your taste)
fresh dill, chopped
fresh chives, chopped

various jars
your veggies to be pickled, chopped as you like.

We do cucumber spears and slices. We've also enjoyed pickling pea pods and carrots. I've added some pepper flakes and other herbs in the past. It's fun to play around with different combinations. I really want to try cooked beets with a little sugar and mint....stay tuned for that.


Add your salt to the water vinegar mixture and mix until the salt dissolves.



Add your herbs and garlic.

Put your veggies in jars and pour the brine/herb mix on top.

Refrigerate for at least 24 hours and enjoy.

Banana Oatmeal Walnut Muffins

The time change this weekend hit me unusually hard. I was pretty much in sweats and a ponytail all day. And, I baked.

These muffins are like all the yumminess of bowl of oatmeal, in a moist muffin. And pretty guilt-free as well!

The original recipe is for gluten-free muffins....mine are not.

1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup yogurt
1/2 cup milk

1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
2 ripe bananas, mashed
1 egg

1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

In a bowl, combine oatmeal, yogurt and milk. Mix and let soak for 15 minutes

Mix flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl.

Add brown sugar, egg, bananas and oil to the soaked oatmeal and mix well. Add walnuts and mix well.

Add the oatmeal mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well.

Fill large muffin cups about 2/3 full, sprinkle with walnuts and bake for 20 minutes.

The original recipe said it made 12 large muffins, but my batter only made 9 for some reason.

Enjoy!

Hope you got through the time change better than I did.

Galette Love

Made this lovely galette for brunch with friends this weekend, and in my haste, forgot to take a photo when it was done! It was beautiful and yummy.

Find the recipe here.

I tried to make mine lower fat by cutting the butter to 1/3c and increasing the yogurt to 1/3 cup. I used my homemade yogurt and since it was a little on the runny side, didn't add any water.

Put all the ingredients in the food processor.

Pulse until it looks like a coarse meal.

I spread on some homemade pesto.

Added roasted red peppers and mozzarella.

Bake and enjoy!

Have a Happy Valentine's Day!

Homemade Yogurt

When I was a kid, we always had homemade yogurt. My parents grew up in India and it was just part of the daily routine. At some point we switched to buying it at the store and it never phased me one way or the other. My parents have started making it at home again, and I decided it's time to give it a try. It's actually really simple and cheaper than buying it at the store. Here's what you'll need:

Double boiler (can use just a regular pot, but be careful not to burn the milk)
metal spoon
kitchen thermometer
milk (any fat content will work, I used non-fat)
yogurt starter (any plain yogurt with active cultures)

If you're using a double boiler, boil the water with your spoon in the pot to sterilize it. Since you're going to be leaving your milk out for 7 hours, you don't want to "contaminate" it. I don't actually know how necessary this is. I read that you should do this, but my parents don't and never have.

Add your milk to a pot and bring the milk to 185F while stirring. If you don't use a double boiler, you have to be very careful not to burn the milk.

Place the pan with the milk in a bowl of cold water and allow it to cool to 110F. Make sure to stir occasionally so that it cools evenly.

At this point I warmed my oven up a little. Just set it to the lowest setting and turned it off after about 5 minutes.

Once the milk cools to 110F, mix in 1-2 tablespoons of your starter, which can be any plain yogurt with active cultures. I think you can buy powdered yogurt starter too, though I'm not sure where.

Now you want to "incubate" your milk and cultures. Sorry, the scientist in me is creeping in. I wrapped a towel around my container and kept the oven light on to keep it warm in the oven. I think ideally you don't want the temperature to be above 100F and you want your container to sit undisturbed for 5-7 hours.

It was soooo hard for me to not open the oven and check...

But, I was able to exercise some restraint and checked after the 7 hours and voila, I made yogurt! It's hard to tell from the photo, but it's solid, and has a little liquid on top. At this point, you stir it up and refrigerate and you can be done. You've got homemade plain yogurt.

I decided to go a step further and make mine into that luscious creamy "greek" style yogurt. Basically all you do is remove the liquid by straining it through a coffee filter.

Place the coffee filter in a colander over a pot. Add the yogurt and wait a few hours.
It goes from this

to this.

So,the scientist in me can't help but do a little math. I started with 7 cups of milk, a little less than half a gallon. I ended up with 4 cups of greek yogurt. Here in W. Mass, a gallon of organic milk costs about $4.00 and would make 8 cups or a half gallon of organic greek yogurt. The greek yogurt I buy costs about $3.50 for 4 cups (32oz). So, the savings for making your own is about $3/gallon. Not a huge savings...but still something and fun to do.

The kids enjoyed helping to make and eat our homemade yogurt. We all enjoyed a bowl with maple syrup at lunch.



I had mine with maple syrup and pecans. A yummy and healthy treat.

Note: If you want to keep making yogurt, you should save a little each time to use as starter for the next batch.

Enjoy!