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Quinoa-Stuffed Acorn Squash with Figs and Sage

September 25, 2013 by Erica

Quinoa-Stuffed Acorn Squash with Figs and Sage

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!

Quinoa-Stuffed Acorn Squash with Figs and Sage

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.

Quinoa-Stuffed Acorn Squash with Figs and Sage

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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Banana Almond Baked Oatmeal Cups (Vegan) + a GIVEAWAY!

September 23, 2013 by Erica

Banana Almond Baked Oatmeal Cups (Vegan) + a California Almonds GIVEAWAY!

Happy Monday! How do you feel about starting the day off with one of these?

Banana Almond Baked Oatmeal Cups (Vegan) + a California Almonds GIVEAWAY!

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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Crispy Peanut Butter and Honey Granola

September 20, 2013 by Erica

Crispy Peanut Butter and Honey Granola // Coffee & Quinoa

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.

Crispy Peanut Butter and Honey Granola // Coffee & Quinoa

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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Vegan Thai Pizza

September 18, 2013 by Erica

Vegan Thai Pizza from Coffee & Quinoa

Today I come to you with a very important question: How do you eat your leftover pizza?

This is one of those conversations we’ve had about a million times in the lunchroom at work. The reason is that one co-worker, a New Yorker and self-proclaimed pizza snob, refuses to microwave his leftover pizza. He claims it makes the crust soggy and ruins the pizza. Another former co-worker was dead-set against eating cold any food that was supposed to be eaten hot, and found it completely unacceptable not to microwave leftovers. And soooo this same topic was hashed out and re-hashed whenever anyone brought pizza for lunch.

Vegan Thai Pizza from Coffee & Quinoa

Me, I’m not against microwaving pizza. If I’m at home, I’ll use the toaster oven instead to crisp up the crust, but at work (or at home now that our toaster doesn’t seem to have survived the move) I’ll stick it in the microwave. I’d usually rather do that than eat cold food – eating a cold lunch in our over-air-conditioned office makes me sad. But I discovered that what I really like to do (and this goes for all leftovers, not just pizza) is to take one bite cold and then heat up the rest. I’m not sure why… maybe I’m just impatient? Or I like to take the opportunity to see what the dish tastes like cold, which I obviously didn’t have the night before when it was fresh? It’s a mystery, and it might be quirky, but that’s just what I like to do.

People have strong feelings about their pizza, clearly. I’m not too picky, other than my preferred reheating method – it all sounds good to me, and that’s probably the reason that I love the idea of this vegan Thai pizza. With neither tomatoes nor cheese, this is clearly not your typical New York- or Italian-style pizza. Instead, it’s made with a peanut butter sauce and veggies that roast to a crunchy perfection as it cooks. It’s actually kind of like the pizza version of my favorite noodle dish! I think it’s clear that we can add a peanut sauce to anything and I’m in love.

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Whole Foods Tangerine Detox Salad with Oil-Free Dressing

September 16, 2013 by Erica

Whole Foods Mandarin Orange Detox Salad with Oil-Free Dressing

Something very exciting happened in my parents’ town recently: they got a Whole Foods!

The old Johnnie’s Foodmaster near the house I grew up in closed, and the blinking Foodmaster sign was replaced with the big green Whole Foods lettering. This is somewhat sad, as Johnnie’s was a staple in my town and in my life: one of my best high school friends worked there for years while we were in high school and college (and can probably still tell you the code for just about every type of produce), and a band from my high school had a song called “Foomaster,” inspired by the grocery store sign whose D always seemed to be dark.Yep, I have some nostalgia for the old Johnnie’s. But Whole Foods is still a major upgrade.

Whole Foods Mandarin Orange Detox Salad with Oil-Free Dressing

I visited for the first time in August, after my flights home from our family vacation got messed up and I knew I’d have to go into work the next day in Salt Lake with no food. While wandering around checking out the bulk bins (my favorite section) and comparing the offerings to my Whole Foods at home (the Salt Lake one near me is bigger), I picked out this salad for my lunch the next day. It looked delicious – check out those colors! – and I figured it would be a good way of starting off a little detox after some serious vacation eating.

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