I never believed bloggers who claimed to bake with vegan ingredients just because they ran out of butter and eggs. Pshhh. You just know people want to see vegan recipes!
But, ahem, now I believe it, because I fully intended for these pancakes to have eggs. Then I got home from the grocery store and realized I had no eggs. Welp. Vegan pancake time.
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It’s been a while since we talked about granola… so let’s make today about my favorite crunchy snack.
Granola is one of my biggest food weaknesses. If it’s visible in my apartment, I want to be eating it. That is great when it comes to things like dreaming up new granola flavors to make for you! Not so great when I have several test batches of said granola sitting around the kitchen all weekend. They may as well be tapping me on the shoulder, begging to be eaten.
These are the kinds of problems I have in my life. Remember Friday’s post about feeling lucky? Mmm hmm.
This is not your bland garden-variety granola. Two types of ginger (ground and crystallized!) pack some serious zing. I would go so far as to say that you must love ginger to enjoy this granola. If you don’t? More for the rest of us, as my mom would say. (And Mom loves ginger.)
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OMG muffins.
I am trying to concentrate on writing a nice little blog post for you, complete with a description of the flavor and texture of these muffins. But all I can think about is taking a gigantic nutty, squashy, apply bite out of one.
They are so good that all descriptions seem extraneous, and the thoughts swirling around in my head keep getting interrupted by interjections of “MUFFINS!” and “HAZELNUTS!” Funny how I really can’t concentrate on anything, including stringing together a coherent description of these muffins, when presented with the thought of them.
Let’s stick to listing the ingredients – that, I think I can handle. And I should tell you that I am excited about every single one of them.
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I conceded early defeat in my annual battle against the utility bill when I turned on our heat this past weekend. Usually, I like to play a game called “how long can we go without turning the heat on,” and last year I made it to November. October just seems like a ridiculous time to need a heater – yes there is snow in the mountains, but we were running the A/C less than a month ago! But I realized last year when November’s gas bill totaled all of $10.75 that I needn’t have held out so long. Pretty sure I would have payed $10.75 to not be so cold when getting out of the shower any morning last October!
So why an October smoothie? Well, to be frank, although I crave a hot breakfast in the cooler months, a meal of hot coffee + hot granola makes me break out in a sweat, heat or no heat. The only solution is to take off my fuzzy bathrobe and eat breakfast in my undies, which can get awkward now that our kitchen table is RIGHT ACROSS from our neighbors’ window. I think we’ll be sticking to smoothies for a while so I can enjoy my breakfast without flashing the nice couple next door.
I also happen to have about two dozen frozen bananas in a Ziploc in my freezer. I’ve mentioned Nate’s banana preferences before – no green, no go – and sometimes I just can’t manage to consume all the remaining bananas in the bunch that have dared to develop a single brown spot. Into the freezer they go. I always mean to whip up some banana bread, but in terms of gradually chipping away at the ever-icier frozen banana supply, smoothies are the way to go.
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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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