Banana Oatmeal Muffins

I adapted this from a recipe I found at www.recipezaar.com, which is a site with a great "recipe sifter" engine, although the quality of the recipes varies a lot. I've changed this one a lot though - for instance, it wasn't muffins before, it was a flat bake. I suppose they are technically not muffins now, since they don't have any flour in them, and don't rise up much, but they're muffin-like. Anyway, they are a yummy breakfast, and are easy, quick, and reasonably nutritious - a big hit around here.

You can make these with over-ripe bananas, and what I do is toss any bananas that are getting brown into the freezer, where they hang around until I thaw them for banana bread, or these tasty muffins, etc. They turn dark brown, but they taste just fine.

Ingredients

• 1 large egg, beaten
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 or 2 mashed bananas
• 2 cups quick oats
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 3/4 cup milk

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350 F
2. Spray a 12-muffin tin with cooking spray, or grease
3. Mix together oil, brown sugar, beaten egg, vanilla, with a fork
4. Mash in bananas - lumps are not a problem
5. Add oats, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and milk, and mix well
6. Pour into prepared pan
7. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until they are pulling away from the sides of the tins.
8. Munch on a couple for breakfast, perhaps with a piece of cheese or two. Leftovers, if you have any, should freeze well (am testing this theory with today's leftovers).

I'm thinking about trying these with chopped apples instead of bananas next time. The original recipe had raisins. I bet you could use any kind of fruit, really, but just watch the cooking time, as it may vary a bit depending on the moisture content.

Grandmother's Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies

Now, this one just came from a book - the Good Housekeeping favourite cookies book. But it is good, and Jess wanted the recipe, so I'm hoisting it up here. Must be the Scot in me, but I really don't think you can go wrong with oatmeal cookies.

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups old-fashioned or quick-cooking oats, uncooked
• 3/4 cup dark seedless raisins or chopped pitted prunes

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. In small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt
2. In large bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat butter and granulated and brown sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla until blended. Reduce speed to low; beat in flour mixture just until blended. With wooden spoon, stir in oats and raisins.
3. Drop dough by heaping tablespoons, 2 inches apart, on two ungreased large cookie sheets. Bake until golden, about 15 minutes, rotating cookie sheets between upper and lower oven racks halfway through baking. With wide metal spatula, transfer cookies to wire racks to cool completley.
4. Repeat with remaining dough.
   

Granny's Shortbread

This was my great-grandmother's or great-great-grandmother's shortbread recipe, which we make every Christmas. The brown sugar is unusual - I think it might be a highlands-lowlands thing? But it certainly makes for tender and flavourful shortbread. Good quality butter makes a big difference too.

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar (scant)
• 1 tsp salt (scant)
• 2 1/4 cups flour

Method (in my mother's rambling email wording)
Cream the butter, sugar and salt, stir in the flour and knead lightly till it blends and holds together. Roll gently, with as little extra flour as you can manage, to 1/4" thickness, or something that feels right - they won't rise much (Not too thin!) Cut in suitable shapes, place on ungreased cookie sheets, bake at 250, 300 if your oven is unusually cool, until the bottoms are just starting to brown - I forget how long - maybe 15-20 mins. Knead and reroll trimmings, again with as little extra flour as you can manage, and repeat. I have always decorated (before baking) with slivers of glace cherries, but you could use dried cranberries or cherries, nothing, or your own invention. Cool completely and store in a cookie tin - freezing not required. If you eat them all, make some more. Bring with you when you come home for Christmas.

You see, dear blog reader, where I get it. I particularly love the instruction to make more after eating them all - it makes this like some sort of recipe go-to loop.

Mrs. A's Chocolat Chippers

These are the cookies of my childhood, best made by the mother of my childhood best friend, who was known as "Mrs. A" because she worked in a daycare centre where the other woman had a name that was unpronounceable by little mouths and preferred to be known as "Mrs. B." Now Armstrong is not so difficult, but it seemed only natural that she become Mrs. A, and when I was little, that's what everyone called her. Her cookies were one of many reasons why I referred to her as "my second mum".

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup butter
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 2/3 cup brown sugar (lightly packed)
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 6 oz chocolate chips

Sift or blend together flour, soda, and salt. Cream butter and sugars. Blend in the egg and vanilla. Stir the flour mixture into the wet mixture, and then add the chocolate chips. Drop onto an ungreased baking sheet leaving plenty of room for them to spread. Bake at 375 until starting to brown around the edges. Cool a minute or two on the sheet, and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Dal

This is how I make dal. I haven't perfected the spicing on this yet, but I thought I would throw it up here anyway since it's pretty good. It's not a casserole, either, of course - but it is good freezer food. This recipe makes a lot, and we usually freeze multiple large yogurt bins of it after the first round. Take this, a simple Pataak's veggie curry, maybe a boil-in-bag or frozen third curry, some basmati rice and you've got a full-fledged Indian feast.

Ingredients

• 2 C dry dal (I often use a mix of different colours and shapes - this time it was half proper yellow dal and half brown dupuis lentils, which are my favourite lentils)
• some veg oil
• 2 onions
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1-2 Tbsp fresh ginger, grated
• 2 tsp cumin seeds
• 2 tsp mustard seeds
• 1 1/2 tsp chili powder
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 2 tsp garam masala
• a bay leaf
• salt and pepper
• at least 6 cups broth or water (I use about a litre of broth, and then water as needed)
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice (or the juice of one lemon)
• a small dollop of butter

1. Get your spices ready: Put the cumin and mustard seeds in a mortar and crush a bit with a pestle, just to crack them a bit to release their goodness. Measure out the powders into a small bowl and set aside.
2. Chop up the onion fairly finely and saute in some oil over medium heat, the slower and longer the better. Ideally, you're looking to caramelize the onions a bit. When they're nice and golden brown you can get on with the rest of things.
3. While the onions are doing their thing, rinse the dal and/or lentils well and pick through to remove any debris in there. Also, peel and mince the garlic.
   
4. When the onions are starting to caramelize, add the seeds and continue sauteing for a few minutes, then add the garlic and the powder spices. Don't stick your face over the pot with the spices toasting - you'll regret it.
5. After a minute or two, add the dal and the broth and/or water, and the bay leaf. Deglaze, meaning scrape up the yummy coating from the bottom of the pot and stir it in.
   
6. Bring to a boil and simmer until the lentils are cooked, around 4o minutes or so. (This is a great time to start making that Patak's curry, and then when that's up to the simmer, put the rice on)
7. Stir occasionally, and add more water as needed. Make sure that there's always enough liquid to cover the dal.
   
8. When the dal/lentils are getting soft, you can mash them a bit with a potato masher to thicken it up a bit, but you want to keep some intact for the texture. If it's too thick, add more water. If it's too thin, let it boil a bit more aggressively or for longer.
   
9. About 5 minutes before serving, add lemon juice and butter (trust me - this tiny little bit of butter makes a negligible difference to the fat content, but a huge difference to the taste). Then taste and season with salt and pepper as desired.
   

Broc-o-mac

Another weeknight standby at our house is the beloved broc-o-mac. This is your basic mac and cheese, but I'm always trying to healthy things up with extra vegetables. So, we generally make it like half vegetable, half macaroni. You can add cauliflower instead of or as well as broccoli, or you can do spinach instead. For some reason mixing spinach and broccoli together doesn't taste good. In any case, this is the ultimate comfort food as far as I'm concerned.

For 2 casseroles

• macaroni - I don't know how much, just make too much
• broccoli - one large bunch
• milk - just less than 3 cups
• margarine - 2 Tbsp
• all-purpose flour - 2 Tbsp
• cheese - 1-2 cups? (cheddar, swiss, monterey jack, whatever - I usually a blend of all of the above + maybe some parm)
• a slice of bread or two (plain old sandwhich bread)
  

1. Preheat oven to 350
   
2. Cook pasta and drain
3. Chop broccoli into florets, chop up some of the stems into smallish pieces too.
   
4. Blanch the broccoli, either in the microwave (with a bit of water to make steam - a minute and a half should do it), or in some boiling water for a minute only (Ian sometimes does it in the pasta water on top of the pasta - I usually do it in the microwave). Rinse well with cold water to prevent loss of colour (if you care).
5. Make a white sauce with marg, flour, and milk. We do this in the microwave: 1. Melt margarine in the bottom of a 4-c measuring cup or bowl. 2. Stir in flour and cook for a minute or two, stopping to stir occasionally, until it doesn't smell like flour anymore. 3. Slowly, a bit at a time, stir in the milk. It should make a thick doughy stuff at first, and then you gradually thin that out until you can just dump in the rest of the milk (up to the 3C mark or thereabouts). 4. Microwave on medium until it thickens, stopping to stir every thirty seconds. At first you won't need to stir too much while it heats up, but once it gets hot you really have to watch it because it can easily bubble up and make a huge mess (and wreck your sauce). Seriously, don't get distracted - watch it. You don't want it to boil - you want to heat it slowly until it thickens. This whole process takes like 15 mins or so.
6. Cut the cheese into tiny little cubes - I do this in front of the microwave while the sauce is going. You could grate it if you want, but I find the cubes make nice little centres of cheesiness within the sauce. Ian scatters the cheese in the veggies and pasta and pours sauce over it - but this is my blog and we're doing things my way!
7. Add most of the cheese to the sauce, once it has thickened. Microwave a bit more (slowly!) to melt the cheese in. If the sauce is too thick, add more milk.
   
8. Divide half the macaroni into the bottoms of 2 large casserole dishes, top with half the broccoli, scatter the remaining cheese cubes around, top with a third of the sauce. Repeat pasta, veg, cheese, and then the rest of the sauce, making there's nothing sticking out unsauced.
9. Pick out and scatter crumbs from the bread over the top. Avoid the crusts, but if a bit gets in - no biggee.
10. Bake one casserole until bubbly and yummy - about half an hour
11. Freeze the other casserole, unbaked, tightly sealed
    

Casserole Derby

Okay, so Jess asked me for some casserole and slow-cooker recipes, and I thought this would be a good place to collect them.

Mostly I don't use a recipe for casseroles, but I do make them a lot, and I always make two at a time (one for dinner, one for the freezer).

One thing to note is that these casseroles take a loooooong time to thaw, like an hour on defrost in the microwave before they're ready for the oven. I've often taken them out and put them in the fridge the night before and found them still frozen by dinnertime. It's still convenient to have work-free dinners around, but they do take time.

Let's start with Baked Ziti
I came up with this after watching the movie In Good Company, and after the scene where Marg Hellgenberger drops the baked ziti and then pukes because she's pregnant, Ian said "aw that looked good. I want baked ziti." So, I came up with this dish which has now become one of our standards because it meets the golden triangle of criteria: easy, nutritious, cheap. The fat is a lot lower than your average lasagna because of the cottage cheese, and the italian-style vegetables include lima beans, which add protein. You can pack a lot of vegetables in here. This has displaced lasagna at our house, something I never thought possible.

Ingredients

• ziti noodles
• 1.5 jars tomato sauce
• 3 cups or more frozen italian-style vegetables
• a clove or two of garlic
  
• 1 egg
  
• 500 mL low-fat cottage cheese
• pinch nutmeg
• basil, oregano (fresh or dried) to taste, salt and pepper to taste (depends on the sauce you use)
  
• one ball part-skim mozarella cheese, grated (you probably won't use it all)
  

1. Preheat oven to 350, 375 if you want to hurry it up
2. Cook pasta (don't overcook as it will get baked later), drain, set aside
3. Combine frozen vegetables with some tomato sauce (I do this in a 4-C measuring cup), and microwave to thaw
4. mince garlic finely, or crush, and add to veggies, along with basil and oregano.
   
5. In the largest bowl you have, beat the egg and mix in the cottage cheese. Add nutmeg and about a third of the mozarella.
6. Add the cooked pasta to the cottage cheese mixture and toss to coat. This step gets all the cheesy creamy goodness inside those ziti tubes and ups the yummy quotient considerably.
7. Put a bit of sauce in the bottom of 2 casserole dishes, spread a quarter of the the pasta in each dish, then a quarter of the veggies, maybe a bit of extra mozza, then repeat the layers.
8. Top with mozzarella
9. Bake one casserole in your prepared oven until bubbly and melty and good. At 350 this will take around 40 mins, maybe 25 mins at 375.
10. Freeze the other casserole, unbaked, tightly covered with plastic wrap or foil.