As a biker and someone who often has to eat on the run, I love healthy handheld foods like granola bars. They fit nicely into my bike pack, they’re easy to eat, and they give me energy when I need a boost, whether I’m tackling a steep hill or a long afternoon filled with errands.

Unfortunately, a lot of store-bought granola bars are loaded with too much sugar (including corn syrup), wheat (which I don’t eat), and raisins. Raisins are okay, but for some reason, I don’t like them, or other dried bits of fruit, in my granola bars. Moreover, for what’s in these little bars, they’re darned expensive. So I decided to make my own this summer.

I started with a recipe from Emily Franklin’s Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 Mom, 4 Kids, and 102 Recipes and made a few modifications to suit my tastes. Here’s my version, with lots of chocolate flavor, no wheat, and a palatable price tag.

Chocolate Flax Granola Bars
Yield: 8 bars

The beauty of a recipe like this is that it begs for experimentation. Substitute hemp cereal for the flax cereal, or if you don’t like chocolate, use plain puffed rice and skip the chips. Don’t like pumpkin seeds? Add crushed hazelnuts or toasted almonds. And of course, raisins will work too.

3 1/2 tbsp. almond butter
3 tbsp. honey
3 1/2 tbsp. brown rice syrup
1 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups chocolate flavored puffed rice (I use EnviroKidz Organic Koala Crisp cereal)
1/2 cup flax cereal (I use Perky’s Nutty Flax cereal)
1 1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats (not the instant kind!)
1/2 cup salted, roasted pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup miniature chocolate chips
Dash of ground cinnamon (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Line an 8″ x 8″ baking pan with foil or a large sheet of parchment paper, leaving the ends hanging over one side so the bars can be lifted out of the pan after baking.

In a small saucepan, stir almond butter, honey, brown rice syrup, and brown sugar together over medium heat. When the sugar has melted and everything looks syrupy, take the pan off the heat and stir in the vanilla extract. Set pan aside.

In a large bowl, stir together the puffed rice, flax cereal, oats, pumpkin seeds, chocolate chips and cinnamon, if using. Scrape the syrup mixture over the cereals and mix until all the grains are thoroughly coated and sticky with the syrup. Dump the mixture into the prepared baking pan.

Now wet your hands with cool water and press the mixture down into the pan evenly. When the cereal starts sticking to your fingers, wet your hands down again.

Bake for 22-25 minutes, checking at 20 minutes. Remove the bars from the pan by picking up the long ends of the foil or parchment paper, and let the bars cool on a baking rack. When totally cool, cut the bars into eight triangular bars. Wrap each bar in plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator. Enjoy!

Since I’ve radically changed my diet and stopped doing so much professional recipe development, I’ve been spending less time in the kitchen, which leaves a lot more time for my other obsession: sewing! I put my sewing machine away soon after my son started walking, a little over six years ago, because I was afraid he’d put a pin in his mouth or slice himself with one of my rotary cutters. Now that he’s almost eight, I decided to drag everything back out … and boy, is it ever fun. There’s something about sewing that really relaxes me and puts me into the “zone.” Know what I’m talking about? Where you’re so involved in a project, you look up and realize it’s 2:30 … in the morning?

One of my “big” projects was a quilted blanket for a good friend of mine from college. Actually, the quilt was for her son Liam, born in December. It took me awhile to finish it, but here it is … my second attempt at “quilting.” I was pretty happy with it (loved the fabrics, which came in a little kit), but I hated working with the faux fur. My friend wrote to me after I sent it and said her little boy loved the fur, so it was worth it. Here’s the little guy enjoying his new blanket. Isn’t he the cutest little thing!!

Next up is something I finished this morning, an apron that I’m giving as a belated birthday gift. I liked the design of the pattern a lot (Butterick 4945), with the contrasting facing and band along the bottom. My son picked out the material — not what I would have picked out, but I think he did a good job picking a polka dot contrast against the ladybug material. (The apron is seriously wrinkled in the photo — I wanted to take a photo of it outdoors before it started raining again.)

While I love the design, I’m not sure I’ll make this apron again. It was a little too fiddly for my tastes, with all the hand whipstitching along the facings. However, I watched the YouTube video that Barbara at Cat Fur Studio posted about her experience sewing this apron, and it looks like I made more work for myself by following the pattern’s directions. So maybe I’ll give this apron another shot; I got back from our local quilt shop not 15 minutes ago and have already fallen in love with some Kaffe Fasset prints that would look lovely made into this apron.

Okay, speaking of aprons — I do have some new food recipes to post, which I’ll get to throughout the next couple days, including one for yummy gluten-free vegan lemon poppyseed muffins.

When my husband and I married, our friends Chris and Melanie gave us a waffle iron as a wedding gift. Waffle irons, along with toasters, are often the butt of wedding jokes, but for us, this was a perfect gift. We adore waffles and make them nearly every weekend.

At first we struggled to find the right recipe. Sometimes the waffles would come out wet and eggy; other times they were as crisp and dry as fall leaves. We even gave boxed mixes a try with disappointing results. Finally, we found the perfect waffle recipe in Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. He gives two recipes: one for raised, which include a bit of yeast, and a quick version without yeast. My husband and son prefer the taste of the quick version, and since I’m the one whipping these up in our cold, early morning kitchen, so do I. The trick is the folding in of two whipped egg whites, which give the waffles their airy constitution. Sometimes I get lazy and don’t bother whipping the egg whites, and you know what? They’re just as tasty, although not quite as light. These waffles freeze beautifully, too, making it easy to have a waffle breakfast during the week.

Quick Waffles
Adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman
Yield: 12 waffles

2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
2 T sugar
1 T baking powder
1 1/2 cups milk (sometimes I substitute buttermilk)
2 eggs, yolks and whites separated
4 T butter melted or 1/4 cup oil
1 t vanilla extract

In a large bowl, preferably one with a pouring lip, whisk together the flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder.

In another bowl, whisk the milk, egg yolks, melted butter and vanilla together. Stir the milk mixture into the dry ingredients until just combined; do not overmix. It’s okay to see little clumps of flour at this point.

Whip the two egg whites until stiff. Fold 1/3 of the whites into the waffles to lighten them up. Then fold in the remaining whites. Cook the waffles according to your waffle iron’s directions.

Lee Gomes at the Wall Street Journal has it right: American cookbook publishers should start listing weights next to ingredients, not just volume measurements. Publishers argue that American cooks typically don’t own kitchen scales, so why include these measures? To which I say “Balderdash!” Most serious home cooks do own electronic digital scales, and if they don’t, so what? Cooks who don’t want to ditch their measuring cups can rely on the more imprecise volume measurement, while those of us who revere our scales can follow the weight measurements.

One important point Gomes alludes to in his essay but doesn’t spell out is why ingredient weights deserve, well, more weight in the kitchen. It’s this: a cup (or a tablespoon or a “pinch”) isn’t always a cup, a tablespoon, or a “pinch.” It’s why your cereal box includes the message, “Sold by weight, not volume” or warns “Settling may occur.” A recipe tester’s measuring cup might be slightly bigger than the measuring cup you inherited from your Aunt Matilda. Or the cookbook author may have baked in his dry New Mexico kitchen and you’re baking his bread in your humid Houston home. Humidity can definitely affect volume measurements of ingredient like flour and sugar (as well it does weight, but still, weighing gives you a better chance at accuracy).

So, long story short — you’ll get the best result from a recipe when you know the precise weights the recipe developer/cookbook used. (And always be wary of recipes that specify a “pinch,” especially when it comes to cayenne pepper — one cook’s pinch is another cook’s pain in the ass!!)

When mid-July rolls around, my thoughts turn to a story I clipped from the New York Times back in 2003, specifically a recipe for a blueberry chiffon pie created by the Times‘ former food section editor, Amanda Hesser. The first time I tasted it, I swooned inside. The marriage of a cornmeal-based crust with the tart blueberries and tangy lemon in cold-creamy base of fluffy egg whites and rich cream … it’s simply the perfect pie for a hot summer day. So every July, I make it. I’d make it more often, but frankly, it’s a little fiddly and time-consuming, plus I’m the type of cook who likes to flip through her recipe notebook in January, gaze at this pie, and think, “I can’t wait for July!” Anticipation is a secret ingredient in my cooking (and baking!)

Yesterday I picked up a quart of organic blueberries grown about a mile away. It’s a self-serve/honor system place. You drive up to the stand, where boxes of berries are on display, pick the one you want and leave your $7 in a metal box. Next time I’m there, I’ll take a picture. Some people are amazed places like this exist. They’re all over New England. What about your neighborhood?

As I mentioned, this recipe come from the Times. I haven’t made any changes to the recipe, so you’ll have to go there to look at it. If you start making the crust very early in the a.m., you can have a chilled slice of pie for dessert; otherwise, you’ll have to wait until the next morning for your slice. (And yes, we eat pie around here for breakfast. Sometimes for lunch and dinner, too. Don’t you?)

ETA: The pie contains raw egg whites. Since we get our eggs, fresh, from local farms, I’m totally comfortable eating raw egg whites. I’d be more cautious with battery chicken eggs. And you’ll notice the crappy crust on this pie — it was so hot yesterday that the crust kept melting under my fingers. No worries — it might look messy, but it sure is good.

As I waited the six interminable minutes for my nail polish to dry — sitting still for longer than two minutes makes me antsy; six minutes is excruciating — I glanced over at the cover of the June/July issue of Domino, sitting on my manicurist’s coffee table. One coverline grabbed my attention: “A No-bake Strawberry Pie!”

It was something like 90 degrees that day. Strawberries were abundant at the local farms. I’ve been slaving away on fall and winter recipe assignments in my 100+ degree kitchen. I fell in love with the idea. As soon as the buzzer on my nail dryer went off, what did I do? I ran out of there — without looking at the recipe.

I realized my error later in the afternoon as the temperature in my kitchen crept up to 105 degrees. As luck would have it, Domino had the recipe on their website and last night, I got around to testing it.

It’s a fairly straightforward recipe. I was iffy on the idea of a no-bake graham cracker crust, but it turned out fine. The recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups of graham cracker crusts, so if you buy graham crackers and smash them up yourself, this equals 18 whole crackers, or two packages. (Another tip: rather than using a spoon to pack the crust down, try a 1/4-cup measuring cup, which makes it easier to pack the sides of the pie plate.)

You make the crust while the strawberry filling cools — yes, you do have to use the stovetop — and indeed, your kitchen will be permeated with the smell of strawberries as the recipe promises. The pie must chill overnight (or for 8 hours; you could make it in the a.m. and serve it for tonight’s dessert). Before serving, you top the whole pie with sweetened whipped cream and fresh berries, which I didn’t do. Instead, I garnished each slice with a dollop of cream since I knew the pie wouldn’t be eaten in one session and I didn’t want the pie to get mushy with the weeping cream.

The verdict? The pie tasted wonderful. We all had seconds. As you can see, though, this isn’t a pie you’d want to serve to special guests. The filling didn’t hold its shape well at all and it looked like slop on a plate. I cooked it until it was thick and bubbly, for precisely 7 minutes as the recipe directed, but maybe it wasn’t enough. Whatever. Were I to make this again, I think I’d use a couple sheets of gelatin to give the filling more structure. And while my husband loves graham cracker crusts, I thought this one was too thick for the pie — but I begrudgingly admit it worked without the oven.

Before Ina and Nigella, before Martha or even Julia, there was Elsie.

A former medical secretary, Elsie Masterton and her attorney husband John left New York in the 1940s to cleave a ski area from Vermont’s Green Mountains. While John and his workers felled trees and packed snow (if there was any — this was before the advent of snow guns and grooming machines), Elsie taught herself to cook, a practical necessity since it became her job to feed an army of hungry men every day.

The ski area didn’t pan out, but Elsie’s newfound cooking talents saved the enterprise. With the last of their savings, the Mastertons transformed their 19th century farmhouse into the Blueberry Hill Inn, with Elsie presiding in the kitchen. A small ad in the Saturday Review promised visitors “Lucullan food,” and throughout the 1950s and 1960s, guests from around the world sojourned in Brandon, Vermont, to feast on Elsie Masterton’s shrimp tempura, her famous chicken baked in wine, and her homey, bite-sized biscuits. Her fame grew with the publication of the Blueberry Hill Cookbook in 1959, the Blueberry Hill Menu Cookbook in 1963, then the Blueberry Hill Kitchen Notebook in 1964, in addition to two nonfiction books about the Mastertons’ lives as country innkeepers.

Masterton balked when her publisher asked for a cookbook that merely catalogued the inn’s recipes. She convinced them that women wanted and needed a cookbook with spice and personality. In the Blueberry Hill Cookbook she wrote, “I think that I am talking with someone; let’s let it be you. You are a gal in my kitchen, at my elbow. I want you to know what I’m doing, every single thing I’m doing, and as often as this is practical, why I’m doing it.” The headnotes in her recipes share amusing stories about her children, guests, and the local school board, impart practical kitchen wisdom, or guilelessly gush over how delicious the dish is. Masterton’s engaging writing style won over not only American housewives, but earned her accolades from First Lady Bess Truman and poet Ogden Nash. An unattributed endorsement on her last cookbook reads, “I read and devoured [the Blueberry Hill Cookbook] like a novel from cover to cover.”

In a day when convenience food became the norm, Masterton fought the good fight: “I disclaim all knowledge of a way of fixing any canned vegetables other than onions and beets,” she wrote. She preached respect for ingredients, instructed readers to make friends with their butchers, and showed them there was life beyond the canned vegetable aisle when they grew their own vegetables or shopped at roadside stands. And although she quaintly refers to women as gals and chooses margarine (the fat of the day) over butter in her recipes, Masterton’s cookbooks are relevant nearly a half-century later. Today she’d be an enthusiastic supporter of CSAs and farmers’ markets, if not a card-carrying member of Slow Food USA.

When Elsie Masterton died of cancer in 1966, mere months after her husband passed away, so did one of our earliest good food advocates. Masterton’s cookbooks are out of print, but can occasionally be found in used bookshops. Signed copies can fetch $25 or $30, and the boxed set of her cookbooks has gone for as much as $90 on eBay. And she still has her fans: on eGullet, an online community for foodies, Masterton’s books were cited when someone posed the question about what cookbooks members most liked to curl up with and read.

Tony Clark, who bought the Blueberry Hill Inn from the Masterton estate in 1968, says he gets the occasional letter asking if Elsie is still around. In a way, she is. The youngest of her three daughters, Laurey Masterton, has run Laurey’s Catering and Gourmet-to-go in Asheville, North Carolina, for 20 years.

“People are always coming in here, telling me how much they loved my mother’s books,” says Laurey, who was 12 when her parents died. “Then they look at me and tell me how much I look like her. I’m very proud to be her daughter.” Several years ago, she reprinted the Blueberry Hill Cookbook, and in February 2007, she published a memoir, Elsie’s Biscuits: Simple Stories of Me, My Mother, and Food ($19.95). “It’s really about me honoring my mother,” says Laurey. “I wish she could see what she showed me and what I have now.”

Laurey feels closest to her mother when she’s making her biscuits; it was her job as a child to line them up on the baking sheets after her mother cut them out with a makeshift biscuit cutter. Today Laurey uses her mother’s recipe in her shop. When one customer learned there was sour cream in the recipe, he declared, “Them’s Yankee biscuits.” He went on to devour them.

Yankee biscuits they may be, but with Elsie’s touch they transcend time and cultural boundaries.

Elsie’s Biscuits can be purchased from Laurey’s Catering and Gourmet-to-go or Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café in Asheville, NC, phone 828-254-6734.

Elsie’s Biscuits

Adapted from The Blueberry Hill Cookbook by Elise Masterton
Yield: 30 1-inch biscuits or 10 3-inch biscuits

To preserve the soft, flaky architecture that’s the hallmark of a well-executed biscuit, use a light touch when patting out the dough and don’t twist your biscuit cutter – simply push it into the dough and pull it straight up to release the circle. Elsie cut her biscuits into bite-sized 1-inch circles. If you don’t have a 1-inch cutter, cut the dough into 1-inch squares or use a standard 3-inch biscuit cutter. According to Elsie’s daughter Laurey, a handful of chopped ham and Vermont cheddar makes a fine addition.

3 cups flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon sugar
4-oz (1 stick) butter, cut into 8 pieces
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup sour cream
1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract
Flour, for sprinkling

1. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar into a large bowl.

3. Using a pastry blender or two knives, cut the butter into the flour until the mixture looks like cornmeal. In a small bowl, stir together the milk, buttermilk, sour cream, and vanilla extract. Pour the liquid into the flour mixture and stir until just combined.

4. Place the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Gently pat the dough out until it’s 1/2-inch thick. Press a biscuit cutter firmly into dough without twisting, and place biscuits on baking sheet.

5. Bake 1-inch biscuits for 7 to 8 minutes. If using a standard size biscuit cutter, bake for 11 to 12 minutes. Serve warm.

I’m obsessed with The Vegan Lunchbox, a blog run by a mom who lovingly photographs the creative veg-only meals she creates for her son. Well, she published a book and I bought it a few weeks ago. I’m not vegan and I can’t even call myself a proper vegetarian anymore. But The Oyster occasionally cries about eating creatures, so I like to have tasty options available for him so that if he ever *does* decide to go vegetarian/vegan, I won’t be at a total loss.

At any rate, I turned to the desserts first (naturally). Being an eggs/butter/cream kind of girl, it has always baffled me how vegans turn out cakes, muffins, and cookies. And when I saw the recipe for vegan Twinkies, I knew I had to give them a go.

I don’t have a Twinkie pan, so I baked the cakes in a muffin tin. The batter smelled kind of funny (you curdle soy milk with cider vinegar … that, plus a bit of almond extract), but once they came out of the oven they looked (and smelled) just like Hostess Cupcakes.

Next up was the frosting filling, a blend of soy margarine (ick), trans-fat free Crisco (double ick), powdered sugar, and malt powder, which I didn’t have, so I substituted with a couple tablespoons of vegan marshmallow fluff. Filled the cooled cupcakes using a pastry bag and tip, and then dug in.

The verdict? The Oyster liked the cupcakes until he reached the frosting in the middle. “Yuck! That frosting is gross!!!” Okay, so I’ve ruined my kid for life by baking him cakes made with El Rey and Callebaut chocolates and frosted with pure buttercream. He’s never had a Twinkie or Hostess cupcake. Me? Oh man, they tasted just like what mom used to put in my lunchbox. They were awesome. I scarfed two of them and felt supremely virtuous. And greedy. They freeze well and I don’t have to share.

It has been awhile since I’ve posted anything substantial here. Guess it’s because I’ve been doing a lot of food writing and recipe development over the last couple months, so time to dip the toes (fingers?) back into food blogging. What I’m cooking/baking for fun:

1. If it’s winter, it must be soup season. My routine: on Sunday night I pull out the pressure cooker and make a batch of vegetable stock (easy as sin: I go through the vegetable bins and throw in anything that isn’t yet moldy and take the bits and bobs I’ve been saving all week in the freezer. Fill the pot halfway with water, add some smashed garlic, half an onion, and some peppercorns, and cook in full pressure for 30 minutes. Strain. Vegetable stock.) Then I cook a potato in the stock, throw in a head of chopped broccoli, cook until tender but still bright green, and then blitz in the blender. Season with salt and pepper. I like the soup a little chunky. Then all week I eat it for lunch with a good amount of cheese mixed in. Today it’s leftover buffalo milk mozzarella. Oh, so good — and pretty healthy, too! I’ve also been making lentil soup and French onion soup.
2. Breads — I’m pretty much on maintenance with bread, making our weekly loaves. My MIL was here from Texas a few weeks ago, and she was reminiscing about salt-risen bread. I ran to my Bernard Clayton and James Beard and started researching. Intriguing! Details TK. Likewise, I’m also fascinated with the “greatest bread ever” that Mark Bittman wrote about in the NYT a couple weeks ago. Just haven’t found the time to work on it.
3. Thanksgiving. I’m not a Thanksgiving food fan. I’m a Valentine’s Day girl: chocolate and champagne. Or even July 4 … at least there’s a chance of lobster and drawn butter. Turkey? Eh. Not my favorite meat. We got a smallish (10#) free-range organic turkey, which I didn’t have time to brine. The breast meat was dry, but flavorful. The only thing I really enjoyed was the mashed potatoes (made with loads of butter and hot cream) and cranberry sauce (homemade, of course!)

That’s all for now. I just got a few more recipe development assignments for January, but I hope to be back with some new stuff w/ photos.

We rarely buy bread products anymore, save for the odd package of hamburger/hot dog rolls or a baguette if I want bruschetta and don’t feel like baking bread for it. Here’s the recipe for our “house bread.” DH likes classic American bread — with a not-too-chewy crust, a fine, soft crumb. The dairy keeps this bread fresh days longer than bread without; important because we don’t manage to eat a full loaf in a day. If it does get stale, I cut it up into squares and make croutons or grind it up in the food processor for bread crumbs for The Oyster’s chicken nuggets.

After a lot of experimenting, here’s my no-fail recipe:

2 1/4 tsp. dry yeast
2 Tbsp. sugar
1/4 cup water, room temp
15-oz. bread flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup buttermilk, room temp
1/4 cup oil

1. In a large mixing bowl (if you’re using a mixer, do this in the machine’s bowl) bloom yeast in the water. I add one of the two tablespoons of sugar to help feed the yeasty beasties.

2. Whisk flour, the remaining tablespoon of sugar, and salt together and dump into mixing bowl. Add buttermilk and oil. Either mix by hand until it’s no longer workable, then start kneading, or do what lazy people like me do … start the mixer’s engine. Use a dough hook and let it mix for about 7 or 8 minutes.

3. If your kitchen is cold, turn on oven for one minute then turn it off.

4. When the dough clears the side of the bowl and looks/feels “springy,” shape into a ball and place in an oiled bowl. Cover bowl with a clean towel or plastic wrap and let rise for an hour in a warm place or in the prewarmed oven.

5. After an hour, the dough should have doubled in size. Gently press out the gas and shape into a loaf. Place in an oiled 1# loaf pan, seam side down. Cover with towel or plastic wrap; let rise again for approx. 35 minutes.

6. OK, here’s the secret. Take the cover off the dough, and place the dough in a cold oven. Turn on the heat to 400 degrees F and set your timer for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes of baking, your bread will have risen magnificently and have a dark golden crust. Turn the heat down to 350 degrees F and bake an additional 24 minutes.

7. Turn bread out onto cooling rack and let cool for 45 minutes before you even think of cutting into it.

Yield: One loaf

You can play around with this formula. I’ve made the dough with just plain whole milk when I didn’t have buttermilk. Or I’ve made fake buttermilk by adding lemon juice to plain milk. Tonight I made a mix of 5-ounces of Irish wholegrain flour with 10-ounces bread flour, and so far, it’s looking good. One time I substituted walnut oil for the plain vegetable oil; I’ve also used melted butter. And another time I flattened the dough out before the final rise and added cinnamon and sugar. Yum. If you need to stretch out the process, you can do all sorts of things to make breadmaking suit your schedule. Stick the dough in a cold fridge to slow down the rise. I’ve mixed up bread before bed, then let it rise all night. In the a.m. I take it out, let it warm up, then continue with the recipe.