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!

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!!)

I was scanning a sale announcement from Jessica’s Biscuit, one of my favorite virtual cookbook haunts, and I zoomed in on this book, Consider the Eel, by Richard Schweid. A cookbook about eels? Indeed. The author discusses the fascinating life of eels (did you know every eel starts out in the Sargasso Sea and spends up to three years of its early life drifting to either European or North American rivers? I didn’t!) and includes historic and contemporary recipes for this odd-looking fish. I’m tempted to order the book, although eels squeesh me out, visually and texture-wise. They remind me of snakes, and the few times I’ve eaten eel, the sliminess of it turned me off.

I’ve never seen eel on a U.S. menu, except in sushi restaurants. Eels seems to be more popular in Europe, where I occasionally see it on menus. Next time I’m in Europe, I want to try two new-to-me eel dishes: jellied eel when I visit London (which won’t do much to quell the slime factor) and deep-fried elvers, or baby eels, a Basque specialty.

Until then, you’ll have to look for your eel recipes somewhere else on the web — or order this book from Jessica!

I alluded that we get a lot of greens in our CSA pickup each week, especially at the beginning of the season. And yes, being that I’m in New England, mid-July is still considered early season. Over the next few weeks, the composition of our basket will become less green, and more red and yellow.

And although I love greens, even the bitter ones, it does become tiresome eating them the same old way, which around here is sauteed in either olive oil and garlic, or bacon and onions. So Sunday night I flipped through one of my favorite recent cookbook acquisitions, Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food, and settled on a kale and potato soup. It was perfect because it also happened to use up some pantry items. My walk-in pantry and chest freezer are heaving with food and I really must empty both out this summer to make room for the winter.

Have I mentioned how much I love Alice Waters? I know it’s fashionable in some quarters to make fun of her. Like, “Oh, who do you think you are, Miss Fresh, Local & In Season … Alice Waters?” Screw those folks. Alice rocks. Her recipes are simple, and as long as you use fabulous ingredients — not hard to do in the summer — you’ll be rewarded with a dish that’s flavorful, good, nourishing, and totally non-pretentious, so I don’t know where these anti-Alice people get their ideas.

Alice’s kale and potato soup is one of those recipes. It’s so hearty, a meat lover would enjoy it, and although it contains few ingredients, its taste is complex — definitely more than a sum of its parts. I happened to have two quarts of fantastic homemade chicken stock in my freezer, which elevated the soup flavorwise. It would be just as tasty with a homemade vegetable stock — barring homemade, a good quality packaged chicken or vegetable stock would make a decent base. The other winning flavor component is the real Parmesan Reggiano cheese garnishing the soup. It has a nutty, salty flavor that lacks in domestically produced Parmesans. Were I not to have the $15/lb. cheese on hand, I’d probably skip it and garnish with bread chunks fried in garlic oil.

This soup makes the perfect Sunday night supper, even in July.

Kale and Potato Soup
Adapted from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 onions, sliced thin
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch of kale, tough center stem removed and leaves sliced into thin shreds
1 lb. Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/4″ rounds
2 quarts homemade chicken broth
Kosher salt, to taste
Fresh nutmeg, to taste (optional)
Shaved Parmesan Reggiano cheese, for garnish

1. In a heavy soup pot or enamel cast iron Dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions, stir to coat with oil, and cook for 10 to 12 minutes, until soft and just starting to caramelize. Stir in garlic and cook for another minute. Add kale and potatoes, and stir to coat with oil. Cook for a couple minutes, then add broth. Bring broth to a simmer, reduce heat and cook for 30 minutes, or until potatoes are cooked through.

2. Taste the broth. Does it need salt? I don’t salt my homemade broths, so here I add a teaspoon or two of salt, tasting as I go. Store-bought broths tend to contain lots of salt, so taste first! Serve soup in large bowls, scrape some fresh nutmeg over each dish, and top with shavings of Parmesan cheese.

Friday is our pickup day at Bear Hill Farm. We’ve been CSA members for three or four years … can’t remember the exact number of years. But I can’t imagine not being members.

The first few weeks are a little slow, which I actually appreciate. It gently acclimates me (and my refrigerator) to the preparation and storage of vegetables. Tender lettuces must be quickly washed and chilled, lest they wilt — not to mention that having washed greens ready to go for my lunchtime salads makes life pleasant. By mid July, harvest time hits and I appreciate having a system in place for all the greens, squash, beets, kohlrabi, beans, tomatoes, corn, and more … so much more.

So this week our share started to look substantial. In my basket there’s a pound of beets (plus their greens), a head of lettuce, a bunch each of rainbow chard and curly kale, 4 summer squash, 3 kohlrabi, and 2 bok choi. Something else, too, but I forget. (ETA: collard greens! How could I forget my beloved collards?)

###

After I finished filling our basket, we noticed a beautiful bird making a loud racket in the field. Anne, who owns the farm with her husband Mike, told us it was a Guinea Hen, a native of Africa. They’re feral and roam the farm at will. This hen had chicks with her. Can you see the one by her leg? “They’re terrible mothers,” Anne said. I guess the mothers kind of wander off, letting their chicks fend for themselves. Already this mother has lost one of her babies. I felt kind of sympathetic toward this hen, because not five minutes earlier, I’d lost track of the Oyster, who’d been sitting quietly at the picnic bench while I dithered about buying some local cheeses available from a local cheesemonger.

On Fridays we clean out our fridge and bring past-due foodstuffs to feed to the pigs, chickens, and goats. This week we didn’t have anything for them. When the animals figured this out, they refused to pose for photos. However this ameraucana hen did deign to pose for us. Ameraucanas are the hens that lay the lovely blue-green eggs I call “Martha Stewart eggs.” I once heard someone at a farmer’s market ask a vendor if the yolks were green. When I spoke to the vendor later, he said he got the question at least once at every market.

When I get home, I sketch a rough plan for our week’s supply of veggies as I wash and bag them. The beet greens were sauteed with garlic for our Friday side dish, and I made a marinated beet salad, which I’ll eat throughout the week. The bunch of kale was earmarked for a kale and potato soup for Sunday night supper. The lettuce — a no-brainer. That’s for my lunch salads. The squash I’d julienne and toss with warm garlic- and rosemary-infused olive oil, a recipe I’d tested from Carol Field’s Italy in Small Bites. The kohlrabi would be shredded and mixed with shredded Yukon gold potatoes for a latke dinner. Still haven’t figured out the swiss chard or bok choi. Any suggestions?

I’ve been on a bit of a bender with the new cookbooks. A couple weeks ago, I’d heard some good things about Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes From a Modern Kitchen Garden by Jeanne Kelley. I’d flipped through it a couple times at Anthropologie, but it just didn’t grab me. Then my dear virtual friend and fellow food writer Monica Bhide picked this cookbook as her top three of the week, and so I had to have it. (If Monica says something is good, who am I to argue?) With a fruitful kitchen garden of my own coupled with a generous share in a local CSA, I know I’ll be cooking a lot from this book.

I’d also had my eye on a cookbook called Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales From a Southern Cook by Martha Hall Foose, who is the executive chef of Viking Cooking School. A couple things grabbed me: first and foremost, it’s southern cooking. Although I come from an unbroken line of born-in-New-England Mayflower descendants, I feel kinship with southern cooks. I adore grits, White Lily flour, okra, field peas, and yes, sweet tea. Not sure why I’ve developed this love for all foods southern, except that — and I’ve discussed this with my southern mother-in-law — I grew up in rural northern New England, where food traditions run pretty deep, as they do down south. I grew up eating church potlucks, biscuits, and homemade pickles and relishes. The other thing that got my attention is the tomato on the cover is stuffed with lady cream peas. I have two 1-lb. bags of dried lady cream peas in my pantry, which I’d like to use over the next few months.

At any rate, I had these two books on my list and so was thinking of running down to New England Mobile Book Fair a/k/a Mom’s Crack Den in Newton Highlands to pick them up. Then I started thinking about the 40-mile round trip (yikes) and how gas is almost $4 a gallon (egads!) and did I really need two more cookbooks (um, yes). Then I thought, “Well, maybe they can send them to me.” What many people don’t realize is Jessica’s Biscuit is the mail order division of New England Mobile Book Fair. A quick check online and I discovered that by spending $50, I could get 1-year subscription to Bon Appetit, a half pound of coffee beans, and free shipping to boot. Not bad! The two cookbooks were 40% off list price, so I added a Chez Panisse cookbook to the order and was good to go. Everything arrived within a week.

This weekend I made the Blackberry Limeade from Foose’s cookbook and it was mighty good. A little sweet, even with half of the simple syrup called for (I’m wise to these southerners with their sweet teeth — I automatically cut the sugar in half for any drink!) but The Oyster and I managed to put away a whole pitcher. Since blackberries aren’t in season up here in Massachusetts, I used a pound of frozen blackberries, which produced plenty of purple juice. I couldn’t find fresh key limes either, so I used Persian limes. The other “odd” ingredients were Kaffir lime leaves, turbinado sugar, and a cardamom pod, which added a subtle flavor to the drink.

This was my first try cooking from Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift’s How to Eat Supper. It includes so many recipes I’m dying to try for our family meals. My goal this summer is to empty out our freezer and pantry, so I want to use recipes where I don’t have to go out and buy a lot of stuff, save meat and produce. Of the two recipes I tested last night, one was a winner, the other a dud. But let’s start with the good:

Cabbage Slaw with Orange-Pumpkin Seed Dressing

From the pantry: EVOO, garlic, white wine vinegar, spices/salt/pepper, an orange, and a carrot

Had to buy: napa cabbage, pumpkin seeds

This was a straightforward slaw with napa cabbage and carrots as the starring vegetables, seasoned with a dressing made from roasted pumpkin seeds, orange juice, cumin and coriander. I made this slaw as a side to go with the Tamarind-glazed Pork Chops, and unlike the chops recipe, this turned out well. Surprisingly well, considering I generally detest coleslaw. I liked the quiet flavor of the cabbage with little bursts of sweetness from the carrot. I had screwed up by buying raw unsalted pumpkin seeds — the recipe called for roasted & salted — but all was remedied by pan roasting the seeds and salting by hand. I made the dressing ahead in the food processor, then a few minutes before dinner, I used the slicing attachment to shred the cabbage and carrot directly into the dressing. Kasper and Swift recommend adding smoked tofu or tempeh to the salad, something I’ll do next time — smokiness would have been an excellent addition to this delicious salad.

Next time: Use a finer grained salt in the dressing and shred the cabbage with a knife for a more uniform appearance. Also, the two servings of raw cabbage I devoured gave me terrible heartburn around 2:30 a.m. Ouch!

Tamarind-glazed Pork Chops

From the pantry: Aleppo pepper (yeah, can you believe it?), garlic, fish sauce, sugar, white wine

Had to buy: pork chops, tamarind concentrate

I had high hopes for this recipe since I love the sour flavor of tamarind, but things got off on a bad footing when I discovered my small jar of tamarind concentrate in the ‘fridge had disappeared. I hoofed it over to the local Indian market, got my Tamcon, and came back home to make the glaze ahead of time. I could tell The Oyster wasn’t going to like the 2 tablespoons of ground Aleppo pepper the recipe called for, so I cut it down to a mere 2 teaspoons. The rest of the glaze consisted of the tamarind concentrate, garlic, fish sauce, sugar, dry white wine, and water to thin. When I taste-tested the glaze it was way too sour, so I added an additional 2 teaspoons of sugar on top of the 1 tsp. the recipe called for. It still wasn’t very sweet on the tongue, but I thought maybe the sweetness would come through once grilled.

I used a Caphalon grill pan to cook the chops, then brushed the glaze over them to finish. Unfortunately, the grilling did nothing to heighten the sweetness. Instead, the sour of the tamarind overpowered the chops — not even the salty flavor of the fish sauce or the six garlic cloves could cut through it. However, the heat from the two teaspoons of Aleppo pepper came though — I can’t imagine how strong it would have been with the recommended two tablespoons.

Next time: There won’t be a next time. This one was dudsville.

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’ve been reading Carol Blymire’s blog, The French Laundry at Home, for awhile now and was thrilled to see she’s shopping around a cooking show. I’d totally roll out of bed on a Saturday morning to watch her dismember lobsters … or hack through a pig’s head, as she does in the demo below. She could be on right after Jamie at Home, perhaps? Food Network, you reading this? Because how many keen female cooks actually relate to Giada or even Nigella (even though their recipes are excellent)? Would Giada ever saunter into a hardware store with a pig’s head? No, but we’ve all got food-obsessed friends, friends like Blymire, who do crazy-funny stuff like this all the time and we’re fascinated. Plus, she’s actually very good on camera — natural, relaxed, and not an inch of cleavage in sight.

I hope her show gets picked up.

In Over Her Head (Carol Blymire) from Carol Blymire on Vimeo.