C-C-C-Cookies!

I was gifted the remaining 10 eggs from a dozen, and have been trying to clean out my pantry. What better way to use up dried fruit, chocolate chips and coconut than oatmeal cookies? 

They're definitely not the most incredible cookies I've ever had (I think peanut butter surprises might take that title) but they're really quick and easy, not too terrible for you, and use up all sorts of pantry items.

I'd also like to try these with peanut butter in addition to/instead of butter and filled with banana chunks, peanuts, and almonds. Yum!

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"Disposal" Cookies

makes 4 dozen small cookies

adapted from Quaker Oats

Equipment

fork

bowl

butter melting device

Ingredients

0.5c butter (1 stick, 110g)

0.75c brown sugar (165g)

0.5c white sugar (100g)

2 eggs

1t vanilla

1.5c AP flour (185g)

1t baking soda (6g)

0.5t salt

2c quick oats (196g)

1c Bob's Red Mill 5-grain hot cereal [or rolled oats] (120g)

0.75c mini chocolate chips (110g)

0.5c unsweetened shredded coconut (40g)

0.75c dried cranberries, chopped (120g)

Directions

1. Melt the butter. Mix thoroughly with the sugars.

2. Add the egg and vanilla. Mix together with the fork until it's a light golden brown.

3. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt, fluffing it with a whisk or a clean fork.

4. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix until it just comes together.

5. Add the oats, hot cereal, chips, coconut and cranberries mixing until combined. The dough will just barely hold all the add-ins.

6. Divide into tablespoonfuls on parchment lined or greased baking trays. Bake for 12 minutes at 350°F, or until golden brown.

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What's your favorite kind of oatmeal cookie? Do you prefer oatmeal raisin cookies or oatmeal chocolate chip? Let me know what you think and leave a comment or email me at piquantprose [at] gmail [dot] com. 


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Savory Oatmeal

Every time I make this, I get weird looks in the dining hall.

"Is that cheese in your oatmeal?" my companions ask me with wrinkled noses. "Gross!"

Yes, people, that is CHEESE in my oatmeal, delicious, gooey, savory cheese. And if you've never tried it, you're missing out big time!

Not eating meat, dining hall brunch options can be fairly limited. Donuts aren't exactly a great post-practice fuel and buffet style scrambled "eggs" got old about 2 years ago. Plus, I like to get at least one of my 10 daily servings of vegetables (yes, I normally eat ten, not five) before dinner time.

Here's the solution:
1. Pile spinach high in a bowl (I'm talking as much as you can possibly fit) and microwave it for a minute and a half. If there's no microwave, use a little bit less spinach and the oatmeal will be hot enough to get it mostly cooked.
2. Put a big scoop of oatmeal on top of the spinach. Microwave for another 60 seconds if you like your food mouth-burning hot like I do.
3. Add cheese, pumpkins seeds, and whatever else looks good from the salad bar. (If you're a meat eater, bacons bits are particularly delicious!!!)
4. Stir thoroughly and chow down (carefully--it's hot!!!)

Don't eat in the dining halls? Make it at home with your slow cooker!

Energy Bars Take Two

Last week, I went on a training trip with my team to Austin, Texas.

Training trip = (Sleep + Eat + Row + Eat + Sleep + Eat + Row + Eat) * (Numbers of days in trip)

It was exhausting, but really, really fun. We also made a lot of great strides as a team, both physically and technically. While I'm glad to be back home with D, I'm also really glad we took the trip.

As you can see, I ate a lot during my training. Most mornings before practice, I ate a bar, because they were easy to eat, kept me going through practice, and were light enough that I could do the warmup run without getting cramps.

For a while I've been trying to find bars that give me energy and make me feel good. I tried a lot of different bars, from the FiberOne bars, to Clif bars to Nutrigrain. Finally I settled on Larabars. I really like that they only have a few relatively simple ingredients, they fill me up, and I can exercise right after eating them.

Wholesome, delicious ingredients.

I don't like how expensive they are, how difficult they are to find, or that I didn't make them myself! So I started to look for recipes. There were a lot of recipes for homemade Larabars, but lack of food processor basically took all of those out of the equations.

Before we left on our training trip, I tried to make a batch of energy bars. The recipe I used claimed to not taste as healthy as the input ingredients. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case--they tasted awful. I rarely throw away food, but these were that bad. Granted, I think I burned them a little bit, but there wasn't much goodness to begin with.

Over the course of the trip, I looked for more recipes, and found two that I liked. One of them is called "oatmeal crispies" and is basically oats, flour, butter and sugar baked into bar shape. I may try these in the future, but the other recipe sounded more like what I wanted: oats, nut butter and honey, with a whole bunch of yummy add ins.

It was really, really snowy here.

So today, D and I ventured through the snow in search of missing ingredients. We came home, mixed these up, and immediately devoured way too many of them. They're incredible!!! The rest I have wrapped up in my fridge ready to take to practice or as an afternoon snack. I'd also like to try making different versions of these.

Below, I have the general version of the recipe, which you can customize to taste however you want. I've also included our version at the very bottom (because it's that delicious) and the version I'd like to try next!

We both had these for dessert, that's how good they are.

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Customizable Energy Bars
adapted from (never_home)maker
makes approximately 20 bars


Ingredients:

1.5c nut butter

1c honey (or other liquid sweetener, like sugar syrup or agave)

1t vanilla

0.75c water 

2.5c quick cooking grains
0.5c powder (e.g. protein/cocoa/milk)
1c coconut flakes (you could probably replace this with more grains)
1.5c nuts (chopped) and seeds
1.5c dried fruit, chocolate chips, etc.
2c fresh fruit, chopped into small pieces
1c crunchy, salty stuff

Slow cooker oatmeal

Brown sugar, cranberries, and oats, waiting to enter the slow cooker.

Seeing as it's finally getting cold and rainy out, it seemed just about time to switch from cold morning cereal to hot morning cereal (at least for a bit).

Our first attempt at oats was an absolute failure. We used what we thought were steel cut oats but were actually quick cooking steel-cut oats. After 8 hours in the slow cooker, we ended up with soup. After it cooled, it solidified into something oat-like, but we decided it probably wasn't worth eating.

We learned a valuable lesson from that experiment, though. We put dried cranberries in the night before (with extra water to make up for them!), hoping they would rehydrate overnight. They sure did rehydrate, and I can tell you now that I prefer my cranberries dehydrated.

Breakfast the next morning. Yum.

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Slow cooker oatmeal
Serves 4

Ingredients:
1.5 cups of steel cut oats
4 cups of water
1 cup of half and half

cinnamon
brown sugar
cranberries
banana

Honey Oatmeal Bread

At some point in the last year, I decided I wanted to figure out yeast. This may seem ambitious, but with no thermometer, no guidance and no prior experience, I conquered the beast.

I started with bagels. In retrospect, that was probably a poor idea, seeing as bagels are basically an extra complicated version of bread. They weren't great, but they were edible and that was certainly a boon.

Next, I moved on to cinnamon rolls (actually, Alton Brown's Overnight Cinnamon Rolls, which are divine). I think the gooey cinnamon made up for any shortfall in my bread baking skills. This is definitely a great first recipe with yeast! If you're nervous about yeast, or have had bad experiences in the past, try it.

Finally, I tried my hand at bread. I chose it because I had the ingredients on hand, and had been trying to figure out a way to use them for about a month. I've baked it probably 10 times, with several variations. Here I'll give you the basic recipe along with step-by-step instructions for the novice bread baker.

Honey Oatmeal Bread

(from Lanier B&B)

Yield: 3 loaves

Ingredients:

1/8 cup active dry yeast

1/2 cup warm water (105°-110°)

1 1/2 cup quick (or rolled) oats

3 cups warm water

1/3 cup melted butter

1 3/4 tablespoons salt

3/4 cup honey

7 1/2 cup bread flour