Rolls.

I decided to make some rolls. Google pointed me to this website. I made them. They tasted good. The children loved having double-decker sandwiches made out of them this week.

Granola

Years and years ago, I got frustrated with the price of granola and decided that it couldn't be that hard to make it myself. After looking at some recipes (I think one was an Alton Brown recipe) and at the ingredients in one of the bulk bin granolas sold at the Good Food Store in Missoula (see, it was at least 8 years ago that this happened!), I came up with this recipe. I am, probably, far to proud of it because I made it up myself (standing on the shoulders of giants) and because I really like it. This is a very forgiving recipe; for example, if we are out of oat bran, I just replace it with oats. No flax seeds? Oh well. Flaxless granola is eaten the world over.

Mix together in large bowl:

12 cups oats
2-2.5 cups sliced and/or slivered almonds
2 cups roasted salted sunflower seeds
1/2 (ish) cup brown flax seeds
2 1/4 (ish) cup oat bran
1/2-1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon salt

Mix together in smaller container (I often heat this in the microwave for 1 minute or so to make it more liquidy);
3/4 cup oil
1 cup honey
Bake at 250 in 3 greased (it's very important to grease the pans) 9x13 pans, stirring every 25 minutes, for 1 hour 15 minutes. Cool completely before storing.

To make it slightly more chunky, squish it all down with a spoon after you've taken it out of the oven the last time. According to the internet, there are ways to make granola more chunky, but I prefer my granola less chunky since I mix it in yogurt, so I don't bother with any of those ways. :)

Enjoy! This makes probably 4-5 quart jars full. I always store it in quart jars so that only small amounts are opened at a time, keeping it fresh (I'm too lazy to make it terribly frequently, so this is my solution).

Since the kids and I usually eat our granola with yogurt and blueberries, here's a picture of Judah with some of the blueberries we picked last summer. 

 

Yogurt

Previously I mentioned that we use Dannon All Natural Whole Milk yogurt. For the last couple of weeks, however, our Wegmans has been out of stock. I can only assume this is due to the increased demand from you, our dear readers. All is not lost! We have in the past very successfully made our own yogurt. In fact, it is better and cheaper, but it does take a little bit of effort. Specifically, we use Yogourmet freeze dried yogurt starter and follow their directions. Three quart jars fit in our yogurt maker ring with the tall lid. I experimented with using the surface temperature feature of our IR thermometer (for humans), but it was not giving me repeatable values so I will stick with the kitchen stick thermometer in the future.

Rebekah's edit: we actually use half the starter that the Yogourmet directions call for--we're cheap, and we get good yogurt that way anyway!

Burritos Smothered in Green Salsa

This is a burrito smothered in green salsa.  I made the burrito in our typical burrito making fashion, but then covered it in the newly made green salsa and stuck it in our trusty toast-r-oven on broil for a while.  The kids preferred to avoid the salsa (it wasn't hot) and just have a normal burrito.

Green Salsa (many years later)

I have made green salsa before and that always turned out well.  At Wegmans yesterday they had some tomatillos that looked good, so I went for it today using this as my guide.  Unlike last time I didn't broil the tomatillos and our blender recently broke (the plastic part around the blade cracked).  Having forgot that it was broken I was at a loss for what to do when Rebekah reminded me that we don't care about the blender anyway because we always prefer the stick blender (easier clean-up, fine grain control over results).  So I successfully have a batch of green salsa cooling down.

Cinnamon Muffins

I needed to make something to take to our small group meeting this morning and quickly searched for cinnamon quick bread.  The second result looked reasonable.  Due to time, we baked at 400 as muffins, layering cinnamon in the middle and on top.  The results were good.

Also, leftover enchilada casserole is good. 

Enchilada Casserole

Long ago I gave up on store-bought enchilada sauce.  It is easy to make much better sauce at home.  But, alas, I forgot what recipe I semi-followed before.  Tonight I tried this one: https://www.budgetbytes.com/2012/08/red-enchilada-sauce/ and it was okay, but I will try something else next time.

I start with a layer of sauce, then corn tortillas alternating layers of beans (leftover black bean soup today), rice, and cooked peppers and onions.  This time I also added some finely chopped kale on some layers.  All the layers also have some cheese (cheddar) and sauce.  Bake 350 for a bit (everything is already cooked so about 30 minutes).  Should be ready when the cheese on top is browned.  Serve with sour cream on top.  We don't bother with sour cream and instead always have good quality plain yogurt with nothing added wherever sour cream is called for.  It is best when we make our own, but we usually buy the Dannon All Natural Whole Milk yogurt.  We have had good luck with most brands that only have cultured milk and some bacteria names in the ingredients.