Fall weather is upon us, and that can only mean one thing: pumpkin!
Let’s talk about pumpkin. Although I’m not the biggest pumpkin spice latte fan – too sweet! – I do enjoy almost anything else pumpkin-flavored. Pumpkin beer and pumpkin puree stirred into my oatmeal are two fall favorites. I’m not planning on bombarding you with pumpkin recipes this fall, but I do think that a quick and easy pumpkin dessert is in order. Enter this whole wheat pumpkin spice mug cake!
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Don’t you love the crossover seasons? When you can drive with your seat heater on and the windows down, wear boots with no jacket, and stuff winter squash with figs. It’s the best of both worlds!
I didn’t really discover figs until this year. Previously, despite my childhood love of Fig Newtons, I thought that fresh figs had 1) a scary texture and 2) a scary price. I liked them only when caramelized to a juicy perfection on top of a pizza at the aptly named Figs, my favorite pizza place in Boston. Then, naturally, I discovered that the blogosphere goes crazy over figs just at the same time that Whole Foods had a giant gorgeous display of them… on sale. Whole Foods 1, Erica 0. More like Whole Foods 20,000, Erica 0 when you calculate the amount I’ve probably spent there this year. In any case, I bought them, was introduced to the glory of fresh figs, and have never looked back.
A few of the ways I’ve been loving figs are:
– Just taking bites out of them! Usually right when I get home from the grocery store :)
– On my oatmeal with cinnamon and honey
– On pizza (although mine will never be as good as Figs’…)
– And finally, sauteed with onions and celery, mixed with quinoa and fresh sage, and stuffed into these adorable little squash bowls.
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Happy Monday! How do you feel about starting the day off with one of these?
These may look like muffins, but they are actually little individual baked oatmeal cups. Chock full of oats, bananas, almond butter, and more almonds, they are the most delicious thing I’ve eaten for breakfast lately. And bonus: they are refined sugar-free and completely vegan. Now that is the way I want to start off my day!
If you’ve never made baked oatmeal before, it couldn’t be simpler. Just mix the handful of ingredients together, spoon into a muffin tin (or baking dish, if you’d rather do one big batch) and bake for about 20 minutes. The result is chewy on the outside, tender on the inside, and very portable – yum. I will take these over regular old oatmeal any day.
Also, assuming that you don’t have time to whip these up on a weekday morning, they reheat very well. A batch on the weekend will give you adorable little oatmeal cups all week!
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We are on a biiiit of a granola kick lately. First there was my Quinoa Crunch Granola, then there were the MixMyOwn custom mixes I mentioned yesterday, and now this delicious Crispy Peanut Butter and Honey Granola. What can I say? When I find a breakfast that my non-breakfast-eating boyfriend adores, I will knock myself out trying new combinations.
My lovely mother had the pleasure of developing this recipe with me in her kitchen, where I am definitely not used to cooking. Is it just me, or is cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen always a recipe for disaster? Not knowing where everything is makes me so frazzled. We added, we mixed, we tasted, we added and mixed and tasted some more, and still weren’t quite happy with the results… and then I burned two batches. Whyyyy. Somehow 30 minutes seemed like a totally acceptable amount of time to bake the granola without checking on it. Hmm. As you can see by the 15-minute cooking time in the recipe below, that was definitely not the case.
Back at home in Salt Lake, my kitchen is still somewhat unfamiliar, too, as we have yet to spend a weekend in our new apartment. The counter space, small to begin with, is still covered with dishes I haven’t found a place for yet, and all my dry goods (ahem, everything used to make granola) are in bins on the floor. Sigh. I am determined to get my kitchen ship-shape this weekend!
So yes, even during a third trial of this recipe at home, I was feeling frazzled. Luckily I kept my wits about me enough to try the addition of Rice Krispies – the ingredient that ended up totally making the recipe! They lighten up what is otherwise a very dense granola – mostly peanut butter and oats – and add a great crunchy texture. I will say that I’m not usually a fan of Rice Krispies in granola… I feel like they’re just a filler that is cheating me out of the other good stuff in there! But here, because everything is coated in a layer of gooey peanut butter and honey, that is definitely not the case. The peanut butter-drenched Rice Krispies stay a little chewy even after they’re baked, making this into a cross between granola and puppy chow, texture-wise. And the taste – yum. Peanut butter and honey is one of my favorite combinations (I eat it on my oatmeal practically every day!), and it provides the perfect balance of salty and sweet for this granola. You have to try it! It is totally addicting for breakfast, a snack, or even dessert.
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My new kitchen. It is small but pretty! This is a “before” picture, taken when we signed the lease. Will it ever be organized enough to show you “after” pictures? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime…
This cafe table that I trash-picked for our apartment during a walk at lunchtime yesterday. Not even kidding. One minute I was walking past a hotel near our office, drafting a blog post in my head (yep), the next I was racing my car back over to load this puppy into the back. It might not be the most beautiful, but we’ve been having a really hard time finding something small enough for our space. This table is 30 inches across. Perfect! Now to find an upgrade for those lovely folding IKEA chairs…
23 Signs You’re Secretly An Introvert. Um, all of these. But especially 7, 8, 11, 13, 14… OK yeah, all of them. I think this is why I like blogging.
These apple cider cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing. Whoa. I wish I had the patience to make cinnamon rolls.
MixMyOwn muesli and granola mixes. I ordered a few of these recently to tide Nate over until my next batch of granola. You choose from all their healthy ingredients and build your own custom cereal! Pictured above is one of their premixes, the Antioxidant Mix. Love! Check them out.
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