"Beans, Beans the Magical Fruit...."

It has been a great morning. We have been cooking up a storm and it motivated me to post some new recipes. I have a new favorite granola recipe from Bon Apetit. That magazine has really changed. It is so much less gourmet and like all publications, follows the local food craze movement, so many of the recipes feature lots of produce. I LOVE granola. I eat it by the handful - often. I then moved on to strawberry yogurt bars. After paying $9 for a box of 12 strawberry fancy schmancy frozen yogurt bars, I thought, " I can make these myself. "

Well, it is several days later and like many of my aborted blogs, this one too went to the wayside. I have been catching up on sleep since the yoga blitz and also I can't stop reading Olive Kitteridge. I was on the wait list at the library forever. It is a great, quick read, not oppressively heavy, but not marshmallow whip either. It is about: the human condition. All of my favorite books are, and aren't most books about the human condition? It is a pretty safe bet to answer that when asked about ANY book. I finished Let the Great World Spin (about the human condition via NYC during the time the man in '74 walked the tight-wire between the twin towers.) Apparently there is a great movie out about that feat: Man on a Wire, but just writing the name makes my tummy flip. Any time the story changed in this book to the account of the tight- rope, my stomach would turn. I could barely read it, and as fascinating as I think the movie would be, I could never watch it. Fear of heights. Fortunately, like many good novels, it weaves in and out of these shared experiences during that time period, weaving them together as the book unfolds. Olive K follows that pattern as well. Just when you think there is no way the writer is going to tie this in as well, he, or she, does.

So back to my cooking. It is a humbling experience to say my strawberry bars were a dismal second to Annie's or whatever brand they were. First, I didn't add enough sugar, second, they aren't creamy, even though I used full fat Greek yogurt. They aren't awful, but let's just say the kids aren't begging for them. I am going to work on this recipe and see what transpires. I think I might follow the fudgesicle recipe, but substitute strawberries. Not as easy as the recipe I created (put strawberries, yogurt, agave nectar into blender. blend. put in molds) but maybe they would be creamy. Then again Ivy powered hers down tonight, so maybe I will just tweak that concept.

I am not a "good" cook (very decent, I might add), but I am an adventurous, creative, and healthy cook. I don't like to waste, and am becoming JUST like my mom and grandma before her in that I am even more frugal in certain areas as I age. The upside: Often I rely on what is available to me at that moment to cook. The downside: there are some misses. Honestly though, we do pretty well and tend to incorporate a lot of local goods in our diet. It is important to me and so easy living in this valley. That being said...I am over growing my own food. It is too much work to have a big garden and I am just not that into it, especially now that my CSA delivers on Thursday and I go to the market after my class on Sunday. It is cheap, fast, and easy. Gardening, unless you love it, is not that easy. This will be my last year as a gardner. I am going to use one raised bed for cut-flowers and plant the other with a few herbs and such.

I love letting go of things - especially those things that I do and then suddenly realize I don't HAVE to do them. (Another cross off my list: growing my own flowers from seed. A relatively easy task, but not really.) I think when you start working again you give yourself permission to let go of these things. Or, maybe I just don't like yard work.

So back to food. I have been really into rice and beans. Those that know me know that when I am gung-ho a certain food, or recipe, I will cook it and eat it OVER and OVER again. So, my last batch of beans I was trying to mimic my friend who is an amazing cook. I always try and make things too healthy - which sometimes works, but sometimes not. I was trying to replicate these ranch beans and as I was soaking them the other morning I told Shawn I was making them, but leaving out the bacon. His comment: why bother? Well, true to form, my beans just tasted like a BIG batch of chili beans. They were pretty tasty, but Shawn came home yesterday and informed me my beans "wreck" him. I argued all beans have that effect. He informed me he has NEVER had this problem until I gave up canned beans and started cooking my own. I don't have that problem, and my kids, who loved the last batch, don't seem to either. When I told him I was making veggie chili (which sounds so NOT good in summer, but I am having a hard time coming up with some new and innovative ways to use beans and I still have some to use) he BEGGED me, please no more beans. So I thawed some hamburger and made tacos, not even taco salad, my usual, no I did him proud and served corn tortillas, cheese, meat and avocado and saved the salad for the side (butter lettuce...UNBELIEVABLE. It is one of my favorites and a beautiful head of it was $2 at the market. $2! Love it! ) The tacos were really good and my hubby and kids were in heaven, and actually so was I. Easy prep, easy cook, and I was starving.

This morning I made a batch of my bran muffins (yet another recipe I have done to death, but my kids are eating me out of house and home and it makes a huge batch.) Usually I add blueberries, but am out until the season begins (which I can't believe - in just a few short weeks) so I added zucchini and raisins.

Bran Muffins

This is a great base for all sorts of add-ins – I have done blueberries, strawberries, peaches, raisins, carrots, zucchini…nothing is bad in them! The recipe also makes over 2 dozen, depending on what you add, and freezes well, so you can grab a few for kids’ snacks (mom’s snack too)

2 cups All Bran cereal

2/3 c. wheat bran

2-3 TB flax

1 1/3 c. boiling water

1 1/3 cup whole wheat flour

1 1/3 c white flour

1 TB baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp nutmeg

2 cups buttermilk

2 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 c brown sugar

½ cup oil

1 tsp vanilla

Mix cereal and wheat bran in a large bowl. Add boiling water, stir well and set aside for 1 hour. Whisk flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg in a medium bowl. Add 1 cup buttermilk to bran mixture, stir well. Add remaining buttermilk, eggs, sugras, oil and vanilla, stir well. Add flour mixture, stir well, add your add-ins. Fill lined muffin pans 2/3 full and bake 20-25 minutes at 350.

My kids are in VBS. Or VBW as Shawn calls it (vacation brain-washing) this week. Today they were playing Jesus in the pool. They really didn't get past Jesus in their dialogue, but clearly they were saying it as a lesson from camp, not as a swear word (a common one in our house....) They quickly moved on to mermaid, their favorite game and they had much greater imaginative dialogue. They don't quite get it, but Ivy did have a talk with God this morning. She also launched into a big, long description about the pillows they made today. Since I am trying to be a good VBS participant, I asked her what the message was today and she told me pillows are good for sleeping. When I asked all 3 of them if the message could be, "God's word is comforting" (which is right on the pillow) they looked at me blankly, so I think Shawn needn't worry about any lasting brain-washing. I think the whole affair is sweet. Sweet messages, sweet arts and crafts, sweet songs, all of it good, clean, harmless fun. I lived it as a kid too. So much of summer is reliving your youth.