Homemade Granola

As the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, I find myself craving some serious comfort foods....Soup and granola! I make soup a couple of times a week. It's usually vegetable soup. This week since I bought 10 pounds of carrots for 1.66$, I made cream of carrot soup with ginger. I must admit it's NOT the best! LOL

As for the granola, I remembered a recipe given to me by a doctor when I was working in an STD* clinic way back in 1989 : Squirrel Cereal.

You take quick cook oats (4 cups) and unsweetened coconut (1 cup),walnuts (1 cup),sunflower seeds (1 cup), wheat germ (1 cup) I didn't put any- I didn't feel like bicycling all the way to the store, 1/2 maple syrup (the recipe said honey, but I had plenty of syrup) ,1/2 cup vegetable oil and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract. You put the first five ingredients in a bowl, mix well, heat the syrup-warm not a boil, dump it with the dry ingredients along with the oil and the vanilla.

Mix well with a big ol' spoon and dump on baking sheets lined with parchement paper. You bake at 350F for about 30 min and turn once. Ok to tell you the truth I put my timer for 15 min and checked it like a hawk because I remember burned granola....And that's not good. After it's cooled, store it in an air tight container. DELICIOUS!

Even if I wanted to do the whole recipe organic....I couldn't. My oats are organic and so is the maple syrup. But it's still better for you than store bought cereal full of refined sugar and assorted crap!

How do I eat the granola? Sprinkled on plain fat free yoghurt mixed with half a banana. TDF! To die for!

A note on the bowl, the 403 green Pyrex bowl. This is my first Pyrex bowl. It was my mother's, the interior is all scratch up, but it holds a lot of memories!

Have a great one!

STD clinic: Yes it's an sexually transmitted disease clinic. I was a receptionnist there for a year and a half. More details in a future post!

By the way, I just joined VTT (vintage thingy thrusday) at http://coloradolady.blogspot.com/

It's soooo much fun! Check it out!

Blood orange marmalade

First of all I want to write that last friday I made pulled pork in the slow cooker for the first time and it was AWSOME!!!

The first picture is of leftovers coleslaw and pulled pork. I had made some biscuits but we ate them all....That recipe is definitely going into the 'do it again' file!!!

Last week when I saw my dad, he was his usual generous self and gave me at least 10 pounds of blood oranges! I like blood oranges but with such a huge quantity I didn't want any to go to waste....So I searched the net for some recipes and I found a blood orange marmalade recipe that i decided to try. The recipe says to prepared 6 jars....what kind of jars did they want coz' I was only able to fill 4!!! I used the regular jam jar (1/2 cup).....That pissed me off!!! On the plus side it looks really good!
I included pictures of the process. I initially decide to cut the oranges with my el cheapo mandoline but I reduced the hald orange to pulp....So I used my trusty santoku knife (it's a farberware nothing expensive or fancy but a really good knife!)

The recipe just said to pour the hot marmalade into the prepared jars screw the lid on tight and inverse them. After to keep them in the fridge....I don't have place in my fridge :(

And I am really paranoid about bacteria in my canning, so I decided to process my jars 10 minute in boiling water. Can someone tell me how come I alway have renegade lids that don't snap???? 3 lids snapped and the other one not, so that is why in the last picture I inverted the jar- It helps with the snapping! If nothing happens ,that one will go in the fridge....