Granola Bars

For the past 3 years I have been working of reducing the amount of refined sugar I eat.  I have not eliminated it from my diet completely but have made a serious reduction. I substitute natural sweeteners like honey and maple syrup when I can and reserve sugary indulgences for special occasions.  Each year I have done better than the year before.  The first year we were travelling and I was successful until we hit Asia in our trip and sugar appeared in everything.  The second year I lasted longer but caved during a week long retreat I organized and needed sugary pick me ups to get me through the busy days.  In 2014 I was successful until August and then went on a trip to Africa and was too busy snapping pictures of wild animals to care about what I was eating.

I haven’t found it too difficult to substitute sweeteners when baking. My only complaint being that some things like, chewy chocolate chip cookies get there chewiness, in part, from granulated refined sugar.  Making the same recipe with substitutes can often lead to a soft, cake like cookie instead.  As a result I have gravitated to baking sugar free muffins, banana breads and granola bars.

This week I decided to try a new recipe for a chewy granola bar that I could to take to work and Colin to school.  I adjusted a recipe from the nourishing apron a bit by substituting in some fun ingredients in place of extra oats.

Refined Sugar Free Granola Bars

1 cup almonds

1 cup chopped dates

½ cup butter

½ cup honey

¼ cup maple sugar

¼ cup coconut sugar

1 tsp vanilla

½ cup nut better (I used almond)

2 cups rolled oats

2 ½ cup combination of favourite ingredients, I used a combination of shredded coconut, pumpkin seeds, raisins, sunflower seeds and flax seeds.

¼ cup flour

1 tbsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 325.  Pace nuts in a food processor and grind until fine.  Add the dates and continue blending until they are incorporated into the nuts. Set aside.

In a small sauce pan melt the butter, honey, maple syrup, and coconut sugar.   Stir until combined and remove from heat.  Stir in vanilla and nut butter, mix to combine and set aside.

In a large bowl mix remaining ingredients together until well combined.  Add the almond date mixture and the melted sweaters to the bowl and mix everything until well incorporated.

Lightly grease a 9 x 13 baking dish and firmly press the mixture evenly into the pan.  Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the edge begin to brown.  Allow to cool in pan at least 20 minutes before cutting into bars.

  

Cheesy Gathering

As of recently I have started a job that requires me to work shift work, two days followed by two nights.  During my last set I came off a night shift, Colin was still sleeping when I got home and as I crawled into bed, just before I fell asleep I told him that since my family was in town would he be able to encourage them to meet up later in the day at or near our house so that I would not have to go far as I had another night shift to get ready for.  

Five glorious uninterrupted sleep hours later I awoke to a house immaculately cleaned by Colin and my family who had brought with them an amazing spread of cheeses, cured meats, pickles, bread, fruit and salad, oh my!  It was a feast to say the least with the best part being the late night snack I had later that night at work that consisted of all the left overs.

Bread in a Pot

I love bread.  The texture of the dough, the smell of it baking in the oven, its chewy exterior.  I originally wanted to start a blog to track the different breads I had attempted to make and so thought I would post my go-to bread recipe.  This is a recipe my mom slightly adapted from Jim Lahey’s No Knead Bread recipe and is the first bread I ever made.  It’s a great recipe because it’s so forgiving and really requires little to no skill to make, just a bit of patience.  Time does the work for you on the dough and using a lidded cast iron pot in the oven creates the ideal baking environment to result in a rustic and crusty loaf.  Each time I make this loaf I use a slightly different amount of water and the loaf never looks the same but it is always tasty and Colin has a hard time waiting for it to cool before he is able to cut off a slice and slather it in butter and honey.

Bread in a Pot:

2 cups of whole wheat flour

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tsp salt

¼ tsp yeast

1 ½ cups water at room temperature

The night before baking, combine all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl and stir to combine.  Mix in water.  The dough should be wet and sticky with no dry bits this may require you to add more water or flour to adjust the consistency (again it’s a forgiving recipe so don’t stress about it).  Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and leave on the counter overnight (min 12hrs).

Two hours before baking remove the dough from the bowl onto a floured surface, fold over a few times to coat in flour and form the dough into a ball. Wrap dough in a clean kitchen towel and let rise for two hours.

While the dough finishes its final rise, place a lidded cast iron pot (I use a fairly inexpensive one from ikea) in the oven and preheat the oven to 450-500 F.  When the dough has finished proofing and the oven is hot, remove the pot from the oven (careful it will be very hot!) and place the dough in the pot, cover with its lid and bake in the oven for 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes remove the lid and bake for another 10-15 minutes or until the crust is brown.  Remove pot from oven and tip bread out and allow to cool on cooling rack for 20-30 minutes before slicing.    

Kona Eats

Those who know me know I love to travel and that most of my travel revolves around eating and food, so I cannot think of a better first post than to writer about my recent trip to Hawaii and the food adventures that ensued.

I just spent a week with my husband, Colin, and his family on the island of Kona, the “big island” in Hawaii. A few months before heading to Hawaii I was researching on-line for coffee joints to visit on a trip to Seattle and accidentally stumbled upon a highly spoke of coffee shop in Kona called  Daylight Mind Coffee Company.  With the trip to Hawaii just a little ways away I stuck that bit info in my pocket and soon after arriving in Kona, while the rest of the family slept in, I made a pilgrimage type journey as I walked the 7 km along the ocean front to this beautiful ocean side café.  I ordered an espresso made of local beans and indulged in their home-made whole wheat baguette with butter for breakfast before making the trip back. 

Something else I always try and research before a trip is finding truly authentic local food, where locals eat and you’re lucky to find it if you’re a tourist.  The internet delivered and we had a great meal at the popular hot spot of Super J’s.  It’s a small joint on the side of the road that if you blinked you’d miss, the inside has a small kitchen a few tables and chairs and the walls are decorated with family photos.   Here we enjoyed the last three lau lau’s they had for sale.  Lau lau is meat, we had pork, wrapped first in taro root leaves and then tea leaves and steamed.  The tea leaf is discarded and you are left with a soft taro root leaf surrounding the delicious meat that is cooked to perfection with all the flavors of the leaves infused into it.

While researching places to eat beforehand is fun it’s even more fun when you stumble upon places on your own.  We had several good eats that surprised us.  One was the seemingly ordinary sports bar in Hilo called Cronies with jerseys pinned to the wall and TV’s scattered haphazardly around the space.  The food was excellent; they make their own sourdough bread bowls for soup, a light as air battered fish and chips and serve fresh caught local fish sandwich style.   We were all thoroughly impressed and agreed it was a great way to end our day of volcano exploring on the island. 

We had a different kind of surprise experience when we pulled into the macadamia nut farm called Joe’s Nuts and were greeted by two enthusiastic dogs and a large man whose shirt was more sweat drenched than not yelling down at us “we rescue animals!”.  Joe, we presume, gestured for us to follow him as he took us to the macadamia nut trees and opened raw nuts for us to try before proudly showing us the newly poured concrete slab that would soon become his new nut dehydrator.  We tried several flavours of the nuts with our favourite being the simple sea salt and the vanilla which he makes from beans he grows himself.   Joe was truly entertaining and his nuts were our favourite snack while visiting the island. 

On our island drives we also stumbled across another local favourite hangout the Kohala Coffee Mill that had potent coffee and perfectly toasted buttery croissants.  While relaxing we sipped local Kona Brewing Company beers.  And breakfast always included fresh fruit from the island.   I came home rejuvenated and fully satisfied with the food adventures we had found.