Oatmeal Bread

This recipe has been a favorite of mine for years. It's my mom's recipe and I've literally been making it since probably middle or high school. Long time, folks! In my book a recipe works when the actual prep is super simple and the end result is tasty and you find yourself going back to it time and time again.

This bread is delish for a weekend brunch or with soup for a quick dinner. Try it and see how you like it.

Oatmeal Bread

3 cups flour (I've used plain white flour or a combination of white and whole wheat)

5 tsp. baking powder

1 Tbsp. salt

1 1/2 cups quick oats, uncooked (If you use old fashioned oats, give them a spin in the food processor to break them down a bit.)

1 1/4 cups milk (regular or soy)

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 lg egg

Heat the oven to 350. Grease and flour a 9"x5"x3" bread pan.

Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl. You can use a sifter to mix everything together or just use a whisk to stir all the dry ingredients together.

Combine the milk, honey, oil and egg in a smaller bowl. Whisk to combine. Then stir the dry into the dry ingredients. Mix together well until all the dry bits are incorporated and you've got something that resembles bread dough. Spread dough into the pan. Bake 55-60 minutes until golden brown. Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack before serving.

Dry ingredients, minus the oats. I used half all purpose flour and half whole wheat flour.

Wet ingredients.

Wet and dry ingredients mixed together = dough.

Fresh out of the oven! Chilling on a wire rack.

Banana Muffins

Oh, hello, muffin! I whipped up these Banana Muffins out of the Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites cookbook (one of my favorites!) over the weekend. I usually make banana chocolate chip bread when I have some bananas about to turn over to the dark side. I wanted to try something new though and so here we are.

Banana Muffins

1 cup flour
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 cup oats
1 egg white
1 egg
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 cup mashed ripe banana (I used 2 1/2 smaller bananas)
1/2 cup plain nonfat (or lowfat) yogurt
(optional) 1/2 cup chocolate chips or raisins

Get all your ingredients in line. Preheat oven to 400. Line a 12-muffin muffin pan with liners, cooking spray or light coating of oil. I prefer using muffin liners.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg. Run the cup of oats through a food processor or blender until you have something the consistency of cornmeal. Add the oats to the dry ingredients.

Flour, baking soda, baking powder, brown sugar, cinnamon & nutmeg.

Oats after a good spin through the food processor.

In another bowl, beat the egg white for three minutes until foamy and increased in volume, but not stiff. Stir the foamy egg white and the additional full egg, oil, mashed banana and yogurt and chocolate chips or raisins if you're using them. Fold the wet ingredients into the dry mixture until just combined.

One whipped egg white, plus one egg.

Spoon the batter into the muffin tin. I added a handful of chocolate chips to six of my muffins at this point just to see how they'd turn out. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool. Enjoy.

Mmm...wholesome and delish!

Day One

I've been thinking of doing some sort of a cleanse/detox for a while. I've read a lot about different juice cleanses like Blueprint Cleanse, and Red Carpet Cleanse where you basically drink all your nutrients for a number of days. I've also heard about the crazy lemon juice/cayenne pepper nonsense. I found something that is neither of those, but will hopefully help me get right with food. I'm hoping to reset my sweet tooth, something I haven't been able to do through sheer will power alone. I'm also hoping to ferret out any food allergies I may have. As many of you know, I'm a vegetarian, but I love me some cheese and I love anything that falls into the starch category. By not eating any dairy or wheat products for the duration of the cleanse, and then reintroducing dairy and wheat I may find out that I have an actual allergy. We shall see.

Anyway, today is Day One of The UltraSimple Diet. I don't like that it's called a diet, but I guess technically it is. So whatever. I did a bunch of food prep yesterday after buying a bunch of veggies, tofu, broth, etc that will take me through the cleanse. Not everything I'll eat is pictured. So no worries that it doesn't look like enough.

I was a little apprehensive about the UltraShake that you have for breakfast, - it's basically silken tofu, soy milk, 1/2 non-sweetened berries, ground flax seed, and ice or water to get the consistency you want. The book suggests adding some almond butter and a 1/2 banana. I'd hate to think what it tastes like without those last two suggested ingredients. It was actually pretty good with them. Breakfast will be easy.

Here's my lunch from today:

1/2 cup brown rice, a cup of broth, and a bunch of sweet potato fries. You get to have at least 2 cups of approved veggies. Thanking my lucky stars that sweet potatoes are on the list, because I heart them. I tossed them with some olive oil and some garam masala, black mustard seeds and salt for an Indian flair. Tasty. I felt full after lunch. I had some carrots and hummus for a snack a bit ago and am starting to think about dinner. Clearly I'm not going to go hungry.

There's a lot of thought that's gone into the food I'll be eating. I've been looking at cookbooks and for recipes on line so I'm actually excited about the items I'll be eating instead of just sticking with steamed veggies and brown rice (and tofu at dinner). I think that's an added bonus for me because this is going to get me out of my comfort zone of always eating the same things because they're easy to cook. If you knew how many times a week I cook something with a Mexican twist. Some of you actually do know first hand - RTL! It's a lot. I also end up eating a lot of cheese that way, which may not be my healthiest choice.

I saw the Krispy Kreme flyer in today's paper featuring TRIPLE chocolate filled doughnuts and for a few seconds wanted to scrap the cleanse and go get some. Maybe someday, I'll be able to have just one or a bite of one and not want to eat a whole box of them. That's the goal anyway.

Time for my dinner.

Chow

Wow! There's a show on the Travel Channel called the Chow Down Countdown. Each episode features 20 eateries that are worthy of being featured on a show that includes the words Chow Down in the title. I happened to catch a bit of the 80-61 show the other night. Looks like they've only aired two episodes so far, so if you play your cards right, you may be able to catch the first two and the new episodes as they air.

My initial thought upon seeing some of the featured dishes, "this is why Americans are fat". Interestingly though being someone who loves to cook and eat, I couldn't get enough of the show! It was total food porn. Clip after clip of amazing, drool-worthy food located all over the country that I will probably never eat. Here are a few of the features that stood out to me. And if you've got some extra time, a few pics from the episode can be found here.

#76 An ice cream sundae called the Kitchen Sink.

#75 The Buffet at the Bellagio looked like it was a mile long and had amazing looking everything.

#73 A ballpark with a burger served in a grilled Krispy Kreme doughnut.

#67 A five-pound burrito called Burritozilla.

#64 Round Rock Donuts. A place that has a doughnut so big they use a five gallon bucket as the dough cutter.

Watching one episode made me totally hungry for junk food in huge delectable portions. It's probably a good thing that these places are located all over the country and not in my back yard! Probably also a good that I don't have cable to be able to watch shows like this on the regular.

One of my favorite out of town food memories is when I visited Sherman's Dairy in South Haven, Michigan on a high school camping trip. I had been on the road with classmates for nearly two weeks traipsing around out west and we stopped in South Haven for an almost-home snack - ice cream cones that were GIGANTIC! I like to say that large portions of food are "bigger than my head," but look at that picture, the cones really were that big!

syrup, it's what's for breakfast!

My niece and nephew like to have what they call "Syrup Breakfast" because, as my nephew pointed out they're, "Syrupean". They do, in fact, come from a family that loves anything you can liberally apply syrup to. I made and ate plenty of pancakes, French toast and waffles when I was younger. The fried peanut butter sandwich could also be included on the Syrup Breakfast list - although I prefer it for lunch! 

One of the best gifts I ever received was my own waffle iron. I think I was 9 or 10 years old. Most fascinating pancake experience was on a trip to a relatives with my grandparents - we stopped somewhere for breakfast and the pancakes I ordered were as big as the plate. A dinner-sized plate. That blew my young mind!

This morning, at my house, it was French toast. Whipped up my recipe with egg, half and half (I usually use milk or soy milk, but had the half & half), cinnamon and vanilla. Oh, and the bread was sesame semolina (a couple days old makes the best FT).