Two Important Lessons

The past few weeks have been bombs for me in the kitchen and in the house, and while that should give plenty of fuel for blogging (considering the point of this blog is to share my mishaps in granola living), it's left me discouraged and unmotivated to share. I did, however, learn some valuable lessons that I need to share, now that I have finally found the time to step out of the kitchen and to plop myself down in front of a computer.

1. DO NOT under any circumstances add salt to already salted peanuts.

A couple of weeks ago I stood in front of my food processor with my notepad and pen, ready to perfect my homemade peanut butter. In went one cup of salted, roasted peanuts, one teaspoon of salt, and a tablespoon of oil. My plan was to gradually add more of each element until I got the perfect blend, take note of what I had added and share it with all of you lovely readers. After one whirl of the motor I took a taste and was almost knocked off my feet. The saltiness was overwhelming, to say the least. I tried adding more peanuts, more oil, honey, maple syrup, more oil, more peanuts, more honey, sugar, ANYTHING to lessen the salt flavor. Nothing worked. I couldn't throw it out because I felt bad about how may ingredients I had put into this project and furthermore, I didn't have anymore peanuts left, so I knew if I wanted peanut butter then I would have to suck it up and eat what I had made. And I did. Every last bite. Boy was I glad when it was all gone. Lesson learned.

2. Let the volcano happen IN the toilet not ON the counter.

As a wanna-be granola mother I am on a quest to remove as many chemical "toxins" from my house as possible. I am not quite sure what that even means, but I think it means I have to make some of my own cleaning products. Since I don't want to throw money down the drain I have decided to continue to use the products I already own and replace them when they run out with homemade concoctions. The first to go was toilet bowl cleaner. A quick google search brought up a ton of recipes, all centering around two main ingredients: baking soda and vinegar. Perfect! I happened to have those two in my kitchen. So, last Friday I went into my kitchen and got a measuring cup, filled it with the appropriate amount of baking soda and added the appropriate amount of vinegar. I figured I could mix it first and then put it into a spray bottle. Apparently I didn't pay much attention in elementary science because I had a volcanic explosion on my counter top. The "lava" spilled all over the counter and down onto the floor. Needless to say, I had sparkling counter tops and only half-way decent looking toilet bowls. Next time I will mix it in the toilet. Also (and this one is for free), do yourself a favor and DON'T use apple cider vinegar. It's amber color, when sitting in your toilet, looks like someone forgot to flush. It's definitely no the clean blue color I am used to, but alas, I press on.

Buffalos and Tacos

Taco night. I hate taco night. It's too easy and therefore makes me feel like I'm not living up to my domestic goddess aspirations. Daniel, however, loves taco night, and why not? It's always successful, as opposed to my usual mealtime experiments, which never fail to be overly complicated but almost always fail to be tasty. Last night on the way home from work Daniel picked up the necessary supplies- tortillas, ground turkey, chips, avocados and taco seasoning. I already had some tomatoes, an onion, and a black bean dip that I made earlier in the week. What followed was dinner delight.

The Meat

I prefer not to buy ground turkey if I can help it. After reading Eating Animals I decided turkey is a no-go, but how do you do tacos for a meat lover without taco meat? He only eats meat, cheese, and sour cream anyhow so it's not like I can just have him sub-in veggies. Sprouts was running a special on ground bison so I went to the brand's website and checked it out. Their bison basically run free on 10,000 acres of land (how's that for free range?), eat pesticide-free grass (and whatever else bison eat), and aren't given any hormones, steroids or antibiotics. It doesn't get much more "granola" than that! Sign me up! I went to sprouts to acquire said bison meat and found they were totally out of fresh and only had frozen left. Bummer, but not a deterrent. At the freezer I found the last package of bison meat and my jaw dropped. Blood-central. The frozen meat was encased in a solid block of bloody ice. Yuck. Free-range ideals went out the window, I could just call Daniel and have him pick up some Jennie-O turkey on the way home. And that was the end of that.

The Veggies

Typically I just eat sliced bell peppers, spinach, tomato and avocado in a tortilla, but I used the last of my bell peppers in my black bean "hummus" and I wanted to save my spinach for a pesto in case snowmageddon continued to lock us in the apartment, so I had to get creative. In my crisper I had a zucchini and a yellow squash, so I decided to toss them with olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic and some Nature's Seasoning and roast them. In the meantime I started to make some pico de gallo. I diced my onion and tomato and tossed them together with parsley, as I didn't have any cilantro, and some garlic. When the zucchini and squash finished roasting I took them out of the oven and last minute decided to throw them into the pico. It ended up being quite tasty, though my onion-to-every-other-vegetable ratio was way off. Still, the pico made a great taco filling and a surprisingly great pairing with some pasta and cheese the next day (snowmageddon decidedly made me more creative in my eating habits).

"Refried" Black Bean "Hummus"

The secret to this next dish is that it is neither "refried" nor "hummus." On Monday I decided I would try my hand at making a black bean hummus. I took Giada's White Bean and Roasted Eggplant recipe and basically substituted every ingredient with other ingredients. Eggplant became bell peppers. White beans became black beans. Lemon juice became lime juice. I tossed in some cayenne pepper and onion powder as well. It didn't taste much like a hummus at all, and though Daniel actually liked it, to my total amazement, we both thought it lacked something (if you play with this recipe and figure out how to make it better, let me know). Enter taco night. In scanning my fridge for veggies I saw the concoction and decided to heat it up to use in a bean burrito or two. What a success! It's very "granola" to see something you made earlier in the week for one recipe and use it in another. Mark that.

Dinner was delicious and satisfying and took less than 30 minutes to make. Really, what more can you ask for? That should be good enough, but it's not. You see, typically we buy our tortillas at the store and although they are handmade at Kroger and have a very short shelf life (having a short shelf life is also very "granola") they still have a ton of ingredients in them that I cannot pronounce. This I cannot abide. "Maybe next taco night I will make my own tortillas," I say to Daniel. His response? "So you mean next week?"

Taco night is here to stay and though it's not the domestic goddess meal of choice, it's something I can feel good about.

"Vegan" Blueberry Muffins

Ideally I'd like to be a vegan. I am, however, married to a meat-and-potatoes man, so veganism doesn't really work very well in our house. I strike a vegetarian-ish compromise for myself, while trying to get him accustomed to a more varied palate. He also really LOVES all things that come out of a box, can, or package. I am desperately trying to lessen my use of all things packaged, while still preparing his favorite fare.

This brings us to blueberry muffins. Try making vegan blueberry muffins that taste just like Duncan Hines. Go ahead, try. Real blueberries just don't come close to the taste of his beloved canned DH blueberries. I am determined, however, to try to make something he'll love to eat that I feel good about him eating. Last week I made a vegetarian version of some blueberry muffins I found on a great vegan blog. She called for soy yogurt but I used greek vanilla flavored and used a real egg instead of the egg-replacer that she used. I have a thing against egg-replacer, though I am not sure why. It just seems to defeat the whole "real-food" concept. (I don't want to use eggs, but until I find a suitable replacement, I will just continue. More on that to come.) Anyhow, the muffins were SUPER tasty! Daniel liked them pretty well and I felt semi-proud of them.

But that wasn't enough. That wasn't "vegan" enough for me. I couldn't just stop at a good recipe. I had to take it a step further. Enter silken tofu. Now, I had seen my dad make a yogurt like substance out of silken tofu so I figured it couldn't be that hard to replace

the vanilla yogurt in the recipe with the silken tofu. Just throw it in the food processor with some vanilla extract and bam! Right? Wrong. First of all, I couldn't get my massive bottle of vanilla extract open. I suppose some of the vanilla had crusted at the top and sealed it shut. I gave up and went to the cupboard to see what else I could use. Why not almond extract and some maple syrup? Well, it probably wouldn't have been bad, except that I lost control of the almond extract and poured WAY too much into the tofu. It smelled awful and tasted even worse.

Most people would stop here. Most people would reevaluate and think of another solution. Not me. Nope, I just cringed and essentially closed my eyes as I poured the silken tofu disaster into the batter. As they were cooking all I could smell was the almond extract. They were pretty much dripping with it. They looked quite beautiful though. I held my breathe as I took a bite. Not bad. Now for the real challenge: the Hubster. Will it pass the Daniel test?

After dinner, he sat down with two blueberry muffins and a diet Dr. Pepper. I waited patiently for the verdict. "Well, they taste different." That's all he said. I pressed him on it and the conclusion was, "I mean, they aren't as good as what you made last time, but I will eat them."

And the search continues......