Excellent Granola Bars

In my efforts to move us away from processed foods (not completely, just where manageable and where feasible) I've been wanting to find a good homemade granola bar recipe. I've tried a few but haven't been wowed by any. And of course I wanted a chewy one - always with the chewy. So I knew I wanted chewy and I always want easy. I also thought that some peanut butter as a bit of added protein and sustenance would be a nice touch, so when I saw this recipe over at Culinary in the Country, it seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

Chewy Peanut Butter Granola Bars

These bars are originally from Eating Well, but Joe put his own spin on things by using brown rice cereal in place of Rice Krispies, using a variety of dried fruits rather than just raisins and by subbing in brown rice syrup and golden syrup in place of corn syrup. I pretty much followed Joe's recipe but also made a couple of changes - I used yet a different combo of dried fruits and I used puffed brown rice cereal (I didn't see any crisp at the store), and I used a combo of golden syrup and corn syrup. Corn syrup is what I happened to have on hand but once that's gone I will likely switch to a combo of golden syrup (it has such great flavor) and honey - I'd like to try the brown rice syrup, but I'm thinking that honey will turn out to be more economical. For a flavor boost, I toasted the oats at 350º for 5-8 minutes or just until the oats began to brown and become fragrant.

These are fantastic. Easy to make and so nicely chewy. I was pleased with how the puffed brown rice worked in these and am thinking the puffed Kashi cereal would work well here. I think I'll add the wheat germ back in next time too. I wrapped each bar individually and kept them in the freezer - that way we could just grab them and go and I didn't have to worry about how long they would keep. I've begun experimenting with other combinations and once I have some nailed down, I will be sure to post them here.

In the Garden: Looking toward next year....

Hmmm...maybe it's time to try this blogging thing again.............

We've had several hard frosts and my garden is finished producing but my time in the garden isn't done yet. It's time to get ready for next year. I took advantage of a gorgeous weekend not too long ago and cleaned it out, but now it's time to build the beds up again. I've got access to plenty of grass as usual, but I've been not-so-patiently waiting for the leaves to fall as my leaf supply has run out.

All in all I consider this to have been a successful season. There were problems to be sure, but we did end up with quite a bit of produce out of our two small beds. Along the way, we learned quite a bit. Here's how I'd sum things up:

Lasagna gardening: Very successful. I love it and can't imagine that I'll ever garden any other way. When we started out last fall, we had thick beds of leaves, grass, and straw with a bit of manure and peat moss thrown in.

As I cleaned out the garden on Saturday, I noticed that most of the matter in the garden was no longer recognizable as straw, leaves or grass - it was just beautiful, dark, rich and crumbly. Just lovely. I was very skeptical that this type of gardening truly would cut down on the number of weeks, but the weeds truly did stay down to a very manageable minimum. If only that were true in the rest of my mulched areas!

Beans: Very successful. I planted Seeds of Change Haricot Vert "Maxibel" and they were quite prolific. Even after I thought they were done for, they still produced enough beans for about one meal per week. It wasn't until sometime this month when we finally got a light frost that they finally gave up. Next year, however, I need to stagger the plantings to keep a more steady supply and avoid an overabundance at one time. I was also very pleased with the flavor and texture of these beans - as long as they were not allowed to get too big, they were tender and delicious.

The cantaloupe was juicy and it looked great, but
it just didn't have any flavor.

Cantaloupe: Meh. We did actually get a few small cantaloupe and while they were nice and juicy, they were not sweet at all. The vines didn't produce much but I have heard from others that this was just not a good year for cantaloupe. We'll probably try again next year.

Cucumbers: Quite successful. I planted several from Bonnie and one from a nursery here in town. The Bonnie's did quite well while I did not like the looks of the other variety and we did not end up eating any of them - they grew very large and were yellowed - just not appealing. The only "problem" was that they while we were inundated for a short while, they did not produce for a very long period of time. I'm thinking maybe I could stagger these as well. I also think I needed to be more attentive to watering them during our dry spells.

Basil: This did okay, but I've had better years. It was certainly at least in part my fault - I let them bolt too fast too soon.

Tomatoes: Overall, pretty successful. There were problems to be sure - first a fungus, then blossom drop and then the fruit ripening very late (and many not at all) but the plants ended up being quite vigorous and healthy and produced a lot of fruit - it just didn't ripen early enough. They were still growing and producing fruit right up until the very end. Normally my vines would be withered and browned by the end of the summer! I believe the late ripening was simply due to our weather - late frost and lots of cool, foggy mornings. I learned that they can indeed survive a fungal infection very nicely so next year I will be diligent about removing any infected leaves right away. And I won't give up hope.

Zucchini: I only planted one plant, but we were still overrun a bit. Just a few days of inattention and we were saddled with squash more suitable for playing baseball than for cutting up and cooking. I'll probably plant it again next year and just be more diligent. Right.

Sage: This did quite well. I noticed that it survives a light frost very nicely and I was picking it up until this past week. I plucked some of the leaves and froze them whole (the leaves are sturdy and survive freezing quite nicely) and have been using them in pasta dishes. It really is just like using fresh sage. I'm already wishing I had saved some more. Next year.

Peppers: These did not do terribly well. We got a few, but not many. Next year I'll plant more and not place them near bigger plants like tomatoes as they got completely overshadowed by my runaway tomato plants.

I should also add that overall I was very pleased with the Bonnie starter plants I purchased from Lowe's. I love that most of them come in biodegradable pots that you can put right in the ground.

So, some plans for next year...........

Lots of staking and caging! I will probably cage just about everything since most everything ended up falling over at one point or other - beans, basil, tomatoes, and peppers all ended up on their sides. The tomatoes will get staked AND caged. They ended up falling over and growing way out of their beds (see photo below). I do have a homemade cage in mind.....hopefully it was execute as nicely as I'm picturing in my head!

The tomato plants fell over and grew a good 3 feet out from the bed.

Watering system. I need some sort of drip irrigation system. I'll do some research on that this winter and hopefully put something into place in the spring. I lucked out this year in that there were very few times I actually needed to water, but who knows what next year will bring.

Starting from seed? I plan to look over different catalogs and may try starting from seed. Starting small - maybe just tomatoes and see how things go. Good thing about that is I know I can always schlepp down to Lowe's and pick up plants if things don't work out!

Add one more bed, extend existing beds. We've already started on that - the newspaper is down and I've added a few thin layers. Now that the leaves are falling, I should be able to get the rest done over the next week or two. I will also add grass and leaves to the existing beds to build them up again. The straw that got used as mulch this summer will stay in place and become one of the layers for next year.

The third bed goes in and the other two have since
been extended.

Oh yeah, and next year I will actually try to MAKE compost instead of just throwing stuff in a pile. As you might remember, I was intrigued by the vines growing out of my compost pile so I let them grow and here is the result:

While it was fun to get a few volunteer plants, next year I want to have a real compost pile.

It's been quite odd to have to buy produce from the grocery store again. Fortunately our farmers market is still going strong and they plan to be open until the weekend before Thanksgiving. Looking at the grocery store green beans, I was REALLY missing my beans. Even the ones from the farmers market that I picked up instead just weren't the same..........

That pretty much ends it for this year though I'm sure I'll post once or twice about gardening over the winter as I look through catalogs and plan things out. Until next year.......

The Best of Both Worlds

Two of my favorite sweets are chocolate chip cookies and brownies. Well, imagine the raptures of bliss that waved over me when I stumbled upon a recipe over at eggs on sunday that combines them both into one delicious-looking double decker bar. Heaven.

While it has occurred to me before to combine a chocolate chip cookie bar with a brownie, I've never gotten around to trying it out, but the food porn photos on Amy's blog were just the push I needed. Drool.

The recipe is pretty straight forward - you start off with the brownie layer and spread that out into the pan. Next you mix up the chocolate chip cookie dough and gently spread that on top. I found that a little difficult to do because the cookie dough is a bit stiffer than the brownie dough, but I managed.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Topped Brownies

I actually baked these back in July so it's hard for me to remember all the details. That will teach me to get so behind on my blogging! These were quite good but I do remember being struck by a couple of things. In my opinion, the cookie layer - being the stiffer dough - should go in the pan first - it would make for easier spreading. However, as the cookie layer is thinner, for this recipe it makes more sense to put it on top. Which leads me to my next point. As much as I love chocolate, I found myself wanting to taste more of the cookie layer. The subtle but lovely butterscotchy flavors of the cookie dough were overshadowed by the intense chocolate flavor from the brownie. Not necessarily a bad thing, but then you probably might as well just make a plain old brownie. To fix this "problem", I would make the cookie dough thicker and make it the bottom layer, topping it off with a thinner brownie layer.

So, it sounds like I have some research to do! Sometime this winter I'll try out my own twist on this recipe and get back to you. I'm sure the family will absolutely HATE having to sample my experiments, but we all do what we have to do.

Fresh Corn

Enough with the tomatoes for a moment, let's talk about corn.

We have been getting some excellent local corn this summer from Tebbs Farms. The corn was so sweet, it was almost like candy! I don't remember it being this good last year. Either this year's crop actually IS better or we just did a better job of eating it the same day. I've read that if you let corn sit around, the sugars turn to starch and it's just not as good. Maybe that has made all the difference.

We've been mostly eating it straight off the cob since summer is pretty much the only time you can do that, but I could not resist taking some off the cob for this recipe that Bob on the CLBB recently, and kindly, shared with us. Corn, bacon and chipotle - what's not to like?

Spicy Fried Corn with Bacon and Chipotle

It's a very simple dish to prepare and it's as good as it sounds. Although I have now come to appreciate cilantro, I still sub in parsley for my son, but I'll bet the cilantro makes this dish even better. Although great as is, a little voice in my head kept telling me that it would be really good with some onion too, so I'll add that next time.

Thanks to Tebbs, I have put some corn - off the cob - in the freezer for winter - 2 dozen ears worth. Next year I'll probably take it a little further and purchase their cheaper 5 dozen bag.

Random Notes

The boys are off at the high school football game tonight so it's just me and the dog. I had all kinds of plans to get a lot of things done today but I ended up in a bit of a mood and got very little done instead. Hmph.

What to do when you're in a bad mood? Bake cookies! I find that when I'm cranky, it's best to stick with something easy and/or tried and true so I chose the Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies that I've posted about before. Yum.

Mood Boosters!

I did manage to chop up some tomatoes so that I can crank out some more tomato soup tomorrow. I've come up with a decent system for using up the abundance of tomatoes. Anything that is cracked or too soft gets tossed in the fridge right away. Normally refrigerating tomatoes is a big no-no but if they are going to be cooked down for a soup or a marinara sauce, texture is not going to be an issue anyway and refrigerating them helps to keep them from rotting too fast and keeps the fruit flies from swarming them. I then chop them when I get time - sometimes making the soup right after chopping or else storing them for a few days longer until I have time. It's nice to be able to take a leisurely approach to using them up.

My last random note for the night is about basil. During one of my turns at manning the concession stand, I was talking with the other mom on duty and we started talking about gardening and cooking. She mentioned that she grows basil. Well, at a soccer game the other night she called me over and handed me a clump of basil she had cut out of her garden. It is called Pesto Perpetuo Basil and she said she got it from Burpee (check the Burpee link for a more detailed photo). It didn't even look like basil! With the variegated leaves, it looked like a shrub!

When I got home, I looked it up and found some interesting info. Turns out this type of basil does not flower and therefore will not bolt like the popular and widely available sweet basil that I normally grow. That could certainly be a big plus - a basil plant that you don't have to fuss over! I plan to purchase two plants next spring and give this variety a try (along with 2 of the regular sweet basil).

I turned her thoughtful offering into pesto yesterday. I did notice that the leaves were perhaps a bit tougher - not tough, just not as delicate as regular sweet basil and so I had a harder time getting them to puree in the food processor. The taste also seemed a bit sharper or more intense than regular basil but it was hard to tell because I had to augment what she gave me with a bit of basil from the garden in order to get a decent-sized batch of pesto. The leaves on the Pesto basil are much smaller and so even though the bunch she gave me looked quite sizable, it didn't amount to much once I sent it through the food processor.

In any case, I'm intrigued to try growing the Pesto basil next year. It's actually pretty enough to grow as an accent plant anywhere in your yard!

I'd better head off to bed if I plan to get up early for football practice and the farmer's market tomorrow.........