Damn Hippies

As I threw together Jennifer Reese's Granola (pg 44-45 of Make the Bread, Buy the Butter), I self-righteously grumbled about how many extraneous calories are racked up by all the butter, brown sugar, maple syrup, and shredded coconut, compared to Ellie Krieger's version. Yes, there are certainly many calories here. Oh my lord, though. In terms of flavor, it blows Ellie out of the water. (Sorry, Ellie). This granola is addictive. It has a delightful salty/sweet element to it. It cooked for over an hour at a pretty low temp, so it turned gold without coming anywhere close to burning.

Conclusion: Loved it. Deeeeelicious.

With granola, one needs yogurt (pg 46). Reese's recipe seemed straightforward enough. Heat milk to almost-boiling, then let it cool until it's warm. Mix in some live-culture yogurt and let it sit overnight in a warm place. Supposedly, the next day, you have yogurt. I had milk.

Ew.

I want to try this one more time before I judge. I suspect I may have allowed it to cool too much to activate the cultures. I definitely won't be wasting money on organic milk again until I know it works, though.

With an abundance of granola on hand, I couldn't resist baking Granola Grabbers (pg 82) from Dorie Greenspan's Baking. These cookies throw calories on Reese's granola's calories. You add more coconut, more nuts, more butter, more brown sugar. Yummmmm. The cookies merge soft cookie with crisp granola, so it's chewy and crunchy. GENIUS!

Conclusion: I like them, but Charlie LOVES them. Score!

Now, back to Nigella. Cambodian Hot-and-Sour Beef Salad (pg 385 of How to Eat) was not-so-great. Strips of steak are stirred about in a mixture of fish sauce, lime juice, shugar, chilies, shallot, and mint, then dumped on lettuce. It was fine, but not very interesting.

Conclusion: Just okay. Salad needs to be really flavorful to make me eat it. I didn't finish my serving.

Fortunately, tonight's dinner ore than made up for it. One-Pan Chicken (pg 360) is just what it says. I used drumsticks instead of a whole chicken (cut up). Salt the chicken, chunks of red onion and red pepper, baby potatoes, unpeeled garlic then drizzle with olive oil and roast for a little under an hour.

Conclusion: Loved it, and Charlie actually ate an entire drumstick. Yay for protein!