Standardby Julie11 Comments

When there’s nothing else you can do, bake. I feel like baking the world a batch of cookies. Is Halloween far enough in the rear-view mirror to warrant a chewy peanut butter-chocolate chunk cookie? Related: If I add some oatmeal, does it classify more as lunchbox/afternoon snack than holiday cookie platter fare? We’re about to embark on cookie season, but although this is the very friendliest kind of cookie, it’s not particularly festive. (Or is it? For the record, a stack of these would be well received by me any time of year.) Peanut butter and chocolate are two of my favourite things, together even better. Chewy in the middle, with a crispy edge and big puddles of chocolate. This is the type of workhorse cookie I bake when I need a good stash of something to have on hand for the hungry and sad, for lunches (W’s school has no nut allergies), and to freeze for another day when we might need more ofContinue reading

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Standardby Julie14 Comments

You probably won’t be shocked to hear that I tend to use this space as my own personal recipe file, and it always surprises me when I look up something I make with some frequency and find it’s not here. Case in point: these nubbly, crunchy-edged scones, which are made with oats and – red lentils! Which turn a pale yellow as they’re cooked and mimic oats, blending right in as if they were meant to be there. If you don’t tell anyone they won’t even know – I promise. I brought some in to CBC this morning, and even though the topic was pulses, no one guessed they had lentils in them. Of course lentils are nutritional superheroes, bumping up protein and fibre like crazy – far more than whole grains do. And isn’t that what everyone wants for breakfast? A good dose of protein and fibre, but also something delicious you can nibble with your coffee?

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Standardby Julie12 Comments

This is going to be short! And a little bit sweet. (Just a little bit. It is January after all.) Related: I think this cold may be packing its bags. Huzzah! I have a bigger, wordier post in the works, but didn’t trust myself to get all deep whilst in this phlegmy head-haze. But I did want to share this – I came across a brilliant tidbit somewhere on the interwebs.. the Kitchn, maybe? It was frozen oatmeal, in muffin tins. Ridiculously simple. Yes, oatmeal is easy to make in the morning. But even it requires ten minutes and I’m not always up for bending over to dig through the bags of grains and seeds in the bottom cupboard. Also? I really dislike the dried-on oatmeal goo pot that almost always winds up sitting on the stove for the rest of the day. So. I mixed up the most ginormous pot of old-fashioned oatmeal ever, with cinnamon and bits of apple and raisins. Of courseContinue reading

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Standardby Julie9 Comments

Did you ever have one of those days when you looked at the clock and it was 6 pm and you had no idea what was for dinner and were completely sick of making dinner but you have a responsibility to feed your two year old and besides that there were several hundred people waiting to hear and see what you’re going to have? Yeah, me too. W and I had a late nap, an unusual event but I have been subbing in as traffic reporter on CBC radio all week, which gets me up at 4:30 am, so since I haven’t yet figured out how to adjust my bedtime accordingly, my schedule is a little out of whack. When we woke up, W and I peered in the fridge, poking around at the usual suspects: the rotini noodles in tomato sauce always on standby, eggs waiting to be poached and put on toast, a tub of mixed greens, some leftover cold rice and barley,Continue reading

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Standardby Julie39 Comments

So, you’d like some Heartland Cafe Raspberry Yogurt Muffins, you say? I didn’t at all mind stirring up a batch – they’re a perfect fit with my coffee and carb cleanse. If you haven’t had them, these are nubbly muffins, thanks to the old-fashioned (large flake, not steel-cut) oats, but despite the quantity of oats they don’t quite come across as what you might otherwise envision as an oatmeal muffin. They’re hearty without being heavy; the oats almost melt away despite not having been soaked first, which many recipes do. I’m not convinced quick oats would produce the same texture, although I’m sure they’d be delicious either way.

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Standardby Julie22 Comments

IT CANNOT POSSIBLY BE SEPTEMBER! How did that happen?? While everyone is bracing themselves for the back-to-school time crunch, I’m hoping things will slow down just a bit as W starts kindergarten (tomorrow!) and August upends itself into September. September!! Can I let the pictures do the talking today? Isn’t a picture worth a thousand words? Here’s two thousand for ya. And really – what more is there to say? I’m a fan of the crumble, but am always after the big, crunchy bits on top – more so than the crumby crumbs, anyway. So I decided to come up with a big-crumb crumble – all big, sweet, crunchy rubble, and lots of it. It looks a bit like a cobbler, but doesn’t have that biscuit quality – it’s more like a crunchy oatmeal cookie baked over juicy fruit. You could do this with any fruit in season, of course. Right now it’s peaches. I added a frozen baggie of chopped rhubarb from the freezerContinue reading

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Standardby Julie23 Comments

It was a good weekend, if busy. It may sound like the picture of domesticity, in fact, when I recap: coffee to go and some good, artsy garage sale-ing Saturday morning, at which W (finally!) became the proud owner of a Slap-Chop – a real one, not the 1950s version my Grandma had that he took one look at and declared “not the real thing”. (He has been asking for one since Christmas. When he got the Graty that came with it, he turned to me and said, “hey Mom! You can put your cheese in it, you can keep it in the fridge and fuggedaboutit!” in full-on New York slang.) This morning the boys decided they wanted to have a lemonade stand. We pulled out the old mixer with juicer attachment my sister acquired at some antiques/curios shop ages ago, which is pulled out a few times per summer for this purpose and no other. I realize it sounds a bit Martha to setContinue reading

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