"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing..." -Helen Keller
 
Mangoes. Peaches. Bliss. What better snack than a little mango-peach cobbler? Really, it was fantastic. It was also a much-needed way to use up a huge bag of mangoes we'd bought another bag of peaches we'd been given. I checked out a few recipes online to get some ideas, then I whipped this one up on my own.

Ingredients:
8 small peaches, sliced
8 small mangoes, peeled and diced
1 T. cornstarch
1 t. lemon juice
1/2 t. cinnamon
1/2 c. flour
1/4 c. wheat germ
1/4 c. oat flour
1/4 c. sugar
1/2 t. salt
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 c. milk

First, I preheated the oven to 375 degrees. Then I combined peaches, mangoes, 3 T. sugar, the cornstarch, lemon juice, and cinnamon in a saucepan. I heated it until it boiled and then let it simmer for a minute or so until it was thick.
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I poured it into a 10'' round baking dish while I mixed the flours, 1 T. sugar, baking powder, salt, wheat germ, and milk until it was moistened evenly.
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I poured the topping onto the peach and mango mixture and baked it for about 30 minutes until it had browned on the top. This will certainly be appearing again in my kitchen this summer!
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What's summer without popsicles? With the weather getting warmer, it was time to kick off summer snack-making with a round of 100% fruit popsicles.

These popsicle holders were one of our few posessions from America selected to come on over in our packed suitcases. They're wonderful, with the handle that catches the juice as the popsicle melts.

These turned out pretty well.

Ingredients:
1/3 cup apple juice
1/2 lemon,  juiced
1/2 small watermelon, cubed
2 bananas

I blended it, filled the popsicle holders, and popped them in the freezer. Fantastic.
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Pumpkin. Totally an autumn-esque food, but I just love it and can't keep myself from cooking with it year-round. I decided to try my hand at some pumpkin-spice scones. There are a bunch of recipes out there that look amazing, but unfortunately they all use loads of butter, which (a) we don't have here, and (b) just isn't going to be healthy at all. So, at the risk of having bunch of true scone connoisseurs stick up their noses at my baking, here's how I made mine. I adapted it from a recipe I found at this site.

Ingredients:
3 c. all-purpose flour
2 T. baking powder
2 T. white sugar (I reduced the white sugar and supplemented with brown sugar)
2 T. brown sugar
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. cinnamon (I used cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg since I didn't have pumpkin pie spice)
1/8 t. ginger
1/8 t. nutmeg
2 T. oil (reduced from 1/3 c. oil)
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree/ mashed pumpkin
1 t. apple cider vinegar
raisins

I just combined all of the ingredients. (Raisins were my own addition, and I'm so glad I decided to throw them in. They added a great touch of flavor.) It took a while to incorporate all of the ingredients; at points it looked like there was too much flour, but in the end, it turned out great.

I formed the batter into 10 discs and baked them for about 14 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
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When they were golden brown, I removed them from the oven. We drizzled a cinnamon & powdered sugar glaze over them before eating them for breakfast.
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We bought bananas... probably like 15 of them, which gave opportunity for this little spring snack. We've been laying off the sugar, mostly for the sake of our teeth, but we couldn't let a chocolate bar sent all the way from our families in America go to waste, so I used it.

Just sliced a banana, drizzled the chocolate, and let it harden.
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This is one of those things that's probably too simple to be called a recipe. I don't really want to insult anyone by giving a step by step, but this was a great snack, in my opinion.

The problem: bagged popcorn has so much fat if you're living in a place without fat-free/ low fat options. Takes the fun out of eating a whole grain.

The solution: make it yourself.

A few years ago, Austin and I wanted to make our own popcorn. We were delighted to find that it was super easy, cheap, and healthy to make it in the microwave. The sole ingredient for making this snack is conveniently available here, too!

First, I just throw about 3 Bethany-sized handfuls of popcorn into a lunch sack (not available from the supermarket here, so I grab a few extra from McDonald's when we make it to the "big city"... oh the things I would have been too embarrassed to do not so long ago...
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Then I simply microwave it for between 3 and 5 minutes, until the popping slows to just every few seconds.

Voila! I used to spray this lightly with my oil mister and then sprinkle salt on top. Now my oil mister has been destroyed but I still sprinkle the salt on.

I should note that I think this stuff is delicious, but I shared it with some friends once and they thought it tasted like Styrofoam. To each her own, I suppose.
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Endnote: Cultural Phenomenon #847: In China, popcorn is a sweet food. It is sold in cups in many roadside shops, sweetened. Our students find it strange when they come to our home and we serve them salty popcorn.

Austin and Bethany Phenomenon #3987293: Sometimes when Austin and I are walking, we'll buy a cup of lightly sweetened popcorn and see how much we can eat by inserting our tongues into the cup and getting the popcorn to stick. Popcorn... such a fun food to eat!
 
I recently subscribed to some e-newsletters from Better Homes and Gardens and a few other similar magazines, which means that now, every day or so, I get a few e-mails full of little decorating ideas, craft tips, and healthy recipes, all of which I find really exciting to browse, even if they're too difficult or impractical to every venture on my own.

But when I saw a picture of granola-covered frozen banana pops, I thought, "Now that's something I could do." As I type this, I'm still unsure as to whether I was mistaken.

So first, I put a bunch of granola in a shallow dish. I actually used some granola crumbs from Friday's granola bars. Then, I poured some peach yogurt (just one snack-size container) into another bowl and added 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon.
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I put the banana halves on "sticks," actually just some thick mini-straws that are sold with the really thin yogurts in this country.
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I then rolled the banana halves in the yogurt-cinnamon mixture.
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And finally, I rolled the yogurt-covered banana halves in the granola bowl. The granola didn't exactly seem to stick very well to the yogurt-covered bananas, but there was no turning back at this point.

I covered the bananas with granola as best as I could, and then I placed them in the dish, pouring the remaining granola over top and placing the tray in the freezer for 2-3 hours. I'm not sure if it will stick once it freezes. Here's a picture of my granola-banana pop wannabes before I placed them in the freezer:
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Go figure. Things I make rarely look as delightful as they did in the picture that inspired them.

And now we wait. I'm about to run some errands, do some running, and then return to see and post a picture of the granola-banana pop final product, as humiliating as that picture may be. Be back in a few hours...
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If there's one thing I learned through the Asbury education department, it's not to do anything without proper reflection. So... In hindsight, I'd say these were good. A noble experiment. Perhaps the yogurt was a little thin (nothing I can really do about that here), but next time I do think I'll take more care to make sure the granola is more flaky... I think individual oats would stick better than heavier clumps of granola. They were very tasty though, and I will certainly be making them again to celebrate the warm spring & summer evenings. (We did need to let them stand 10 minutes after removing them from the freezer before eating them.)
 
Back in the day, a whole two years ago, when Austin and I were still dating, a good portion of our dates consisted of cooking things. Here in our home, we don't have heat or AC in our family room/dining room, bathroom, or kitchen, which scares us away from cooking "just for fun" about 8 out of 12 months in the year. Fortunately, though it's a little cold, now is not one of those months. So we decided to whip up some granola bars as part of our afternoon together.

First, we put the following ingredients on a baking sheet and toasted them for about 10 minutes at 400 degrees:
-2 cups oats
-1/3 cup wheat germ
-1/2 cup sunflower seeds
-3/4 cup crushed peanuts
-1/4 cup chopped almonds
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Here's Austin, ever the happy camper, removing the toasted goods from the oven. (Yes, the thing behind him that looks like a toaster is our oven... Gotta love baking batches of cookies one at a time!)

While they were toasting, we combined 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1/3 cup of honey, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt in a saucepan and brought it to a simmer, stirring often to prevent burning. (This sugar was reduced quite a lot from other recipes we saw, but after tasting the bars, I'd say it could safely be reduced even more and still taste good.)

We stirred the oat-nut-seed-wheat germ mixture into the sweet mixture and made sure it was well distributed.
At this point, it would have been useful to have some wax paper for a happy, no-stick guarantee, but the corner store has never heard of such a thing, so we lightly oiled the tray and then spread a layer of oat flour on it (food-processored oats, fairly course but good for adding to recipes for a bit of extra fiber.)

Then we spread the goodness onto the tray.
We pressed the mixture down really well. At first, I tried to use the back of a spatula, but it was sticking quite a lot, and I found that my hands could better do the job. I pressed them in really well to help keep them from crumbling later.
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After pressing them in well, we sprinkled m&ms on one half (they were deceptively sold in a mini-m&m container, but they were actually regularly sized), and raisins on the other half and pressed those in as well. At first, it didn't seem they'd stick very well, but they actually did after the bars hardened.
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We set them on the counter for two hours or so to cool and harden before attempting to cut them. When we cut them, they mostly adhered to one another, but admittedly, they did not necessary slice neatly with the knife; there was some breakage. Still really good, very edible, still in pieces that were good for a few bites each, but a bit crumbly. Wax paper could have helped with the removal from the pan. Also, we think next time we might add a teaspoon or so of water to keep the bars more chewy and easier to cut rather than more on the crunchy side, as they were this time.
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     My kitchen. Mostly a lab for humble experiments, sometimes influenced by a recipe found online, altered by substituting every other ingredient for a variation that we can find locally.
     Living in the land of creepily sweet bread (often stuffed with red beans or topped with "crispy pork flakes"), I'd like to improve at making my own bread.
     This month's experiment: pitas. These turned out well with a nice pita-pocket in the center of about 65% of the pitas that came out of the oven. I don't really know how that happens, but I think it's impressive.
     First, I mixed:
     -1 cup flour
     -1 Tablespoon wheat germ
     -2 teaspoons salt
     -2 teaspoons yeast
     -1 Tablespoon sugar.

     Then I added 1 cup of warm water and 1 Tablespoon of oil. I beat it vigorously for 3 minutes, then I added about another cup and two thirds until the dough was really moist but not ridiculously sticky.
I kneaded it for about 7 minutes, then formed it into a large, tight ball. I used my metal scraper to divide it into 8 pieces...
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Then I formed each piece into a ball and covered them with a damp towel for 30 minutes to rest. While they were resting, I preheated the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. After 30 minutes, I used a rolling pin to flatten each pita to be pretty thin (I'm not really sure how thin... not like paper, but definitely thinner than 1/2 inch).

I placed them on tin foil because I read somewhere that this creates "softer heat" and then I put the tin foil directly on the oven rack and baked the pitas 5-8 minutes until they puffed up in the middle and were golden brown.
We have tried these with tuna, with jelly, with fruit and yogurt, and even as pita pizzas!
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With the grand success of homemade peanut butter a few days ago, I decided to try making some cashew-almond butter, something I'd seen on the Internet a while back. The original recipe used a 2:1 ratio of cashews and almonds. I used a 1:1 ratio. This could be why my finished product was just a little more crumbly than I'd have hoped for.

First, I put 1 cup of cashews and 1 cup of almonds in the food processor. Depending on whether the nuts are pre-salted will determine how much salt to use; it will probably need somewhere in the ballpark of 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon salt.
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Then, as with the peanut butter, I just turned the food processor on high for a while until the nuts became well processed and crumbly.
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After the nuts began to become a bit creamy, the high setting was driving the nut butter up the sides of the food processor, away from the blades, so I turned the processor to a lower setting to finish the job. Adding a little oil or water could help to moisten this mixture, or it could have been my cashew-almond ratio. I think the peanut butter wins for taste, which surprised me but made my wallet happy.
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Who knew making peanut butter was so easy? Certainly not me. With the recent conviction to stop eating sugar (as much as possible) for the sake of our teeth, I decided to try making some homemade peanut butter, all natural, no sugar. It was one of the easiest things I could have made; I wonder why I didn't try this before.

First, I bought some peanuts:
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Then, I put two cups of peanuts into the food processor along with 1/2 a teaspoon of salt:
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Finally, I hit the process button. I used a high setting at first and moved to a low setting later. After about a minute, the peanuts were in small pieces. About a minute or two later, they started coming together into a paste. I left ours kind of chunky. It was great on bananas and apples for dinner!
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