Good Intentions Do Not Keep a Blog Going But I'm Trying To Make Up For That A Little By Finally Posting This Recipe

Just in case you didn't notice, I've been super lame about blogging.  As in, I haven't.  Since October.  Wow, that is really pathetic.  Oddly enough, wanting to blog, meaning to blog, and composing blog posts in my head are all things that are helpful to a blogger, but do not in fact necessarily result in any actually blogging.  Who knew?

So I've taken another inadvertent hiatus with no dramatic reasons behind it.  The Marks family is doing fine and keeping busy as usual. It's just been the same old underlying problem of not actually scheduling time to blog.  Plus, we don't have any good pictures of anything since October 2nd.  Wasn't that the day Alan ran his first ever full marathon? you ask.  Why yes it was!  It also rained.  A lot.  And the camera got wet.  A lot.  And it died. Just once, but very thoroughly.  So we've been limited to whatever our phones can capture and that makes me unexcited about documenting events because the pix are just lame (mostly because there's a tangible delay between when you hit the little shutter icon and when the fake shutter sound--and the actual taking of the picture--occurs) and not having good pictures has made me unexcited about blogging.

But never mind that for now.

For Lent, I have promised myself that I will complete some sort of correspondence every day (and also that I will not eat fast food for lunch but that's another post altogether, mostly about the fact that I am not giving up Coke this year. Go ahead: call me a wuss, but I think I'm doing my family a favor).  So far, I have written one long-overdue thank you note and composed an article for a newsletter.  Today I am blogging. [And by "today" I mean Friday even though it's technically Saturday because it is now after midnight(!).]

So, here is my recipe for Homemade Granola Bars that I promised I would pass along to several people, but particularly Anne-Marie at Green(ish) Monkeys.  These hearty snacks debuted officially at last year's MDI 10k and fun run and a picnic afterward which our two families enjoyed together.  This is my favorite healthy-ish food and four-fifths of our family* loves them, particularly when hiking or before and after road races.  I could eat them all day.  Nut-free versions have been endorsed (by virtue of practically being inhaled) by the Orono Middle School Field Hockey team and the Cheerleading squad.  Here's James showing his approval at MDI. 

*Alan doesn't "do" oatmeal.  Or nuts.  Or dried cherries.  And definitely not wheat germ. Oy!


Nancy's Homemade Granola Bars
Recipe adapted from several I found online and my personal penchant for combining almonds, dark chocolate and dried cherries.  

2 cups oats

1 cup crushed Cheerios (this started because I had a bunch that were stale and I thought it was a good way to use them up, but I liked it so I keep putting them in)
3/4 cup chopped almonds (I usually use unsalted)

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

3/4 cup honey crunch wheat germ


2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup honey
4 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons vanilla


a handful of dried cherries, chopped 

chocolate chips/chopped chocolate, to taste

1. Mix the first four dry ingredients together, spread on a baking pan and toast lightly in the oven. Add the wheat germ after toasting because it tends to burn. 

Note:  Don't let the dry ingredients burn.  And if you do, don't use it anyway because you'll still taste the burny parts even if you add orange-flavored chocolate you got for Christmas and that's just a big ol' waste of good chocolate. In fact, I'm not entirely sure this whole toasting step is necessary.... 

2. Meanwhile, combine the sugar, honey, butter and vanilla in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Remove from heat.

3. Mix everything together in a large bowl, adding the chocolate last.  Pour mixture into a greased 9 x 13 pan. Cover with a piece of parchment paper and press flat into pan (I use a small cutting board to make it very smooth). Allow to cool before cutting into bars or square.

Of course you can play with the ingredients all you want.  I usually use a combination of dark and milk chocolate.  The orange-flavored stuff would have been great if it weren't for the whole burned wheat germ thing. I have plans to try white chocolate, pecans, coconut, peanut butter, orange zest, etc.  Skip the nuts when sending to school functions (ours has a nut-free policy, but it's good to err on the side of caution anyway). 

Enjoy!

Why Not Have Pie for Breakfast?

Nana Mary brought us two big bags of apples a while back, and yesterday, I finally got around to making an apple pie with help from Jeremy and Madeline (James is in Boston with the Boy Scouts).  I peeled the apples, Jeremy operated the corer-slicer gadget, and Madeline mixed the spices.  We used a Betty Crocker pie crust mix with Asiago cheese added in. We also added raspberries and blackberries to our filling.  

We cut heart shapes in the top crust and slathered it with cream with cinnamon and nutmeg.  It was beautiful!  But I forgot to take a picture before I wrapped it in 3 layers of plastic wrap.  Oops.  

It is now in the freezer and ready to go to Vermont to be baked for Thanksgiving.

We were pretty enthusiastic and had lots of apple filling leftover.

So, this morning I thought, Why NOT have pie for breakfast?!

I used a smaller crock to bake our mini deep-dish pie.  

I experimented with the crust: Bisquick, butter, water and Asiago.

We repeated yesterday's decorating scheme.  It came out even more beautiful than the first one...

...and tastes delicious with tangy frozen yogurt!

Yummmm........!

Gingerbread Snowflakes or How to Cheat Impressively

Today we made one of our signature holiday cookies.  It's a veritable study in how many "cheats" one can employ at the same time.  For you my loyal followers, I lay out all my secrets.

1. Purchase Pillsbury Gingerbread Cookie Dough (and refrain from reading the ingredients list).

I look for it in the grocery store when I'm doing my Thanksgiving shopping.  It's actually on the T-day grocery list that I perpetually recycle.  This year, I found it the week after at the Hannaford in Bangor (not at Old Town which is closer to home and my default location).  If you're local and you're looking for it, you may already be too late, particularly since I picked up three rolls each for myself and mum.  In fact, it may be about time to look for the easter goodies you love (commercialism astounds me).

2. Wait for the perfect large block of production time.  Today's snow day--a surprise block of quality family time--was the perfect bonus cheat.

3.  Procure cheap child labor, willing to "work" for the chance to disperse flour all over the dining room table, the chairs, the floor, themselves and me, and nibble on raw dough when they thought I wasn't looking.  And when they knew I was.  And after I said to stop.  And after Alan said to stop.

4. Assemble your tools:  a marble or glass board (one per laborer), flour, a spatula (this awesome one is from Pampered Chef), and flower shaped cookie cutters (the tiny one is from a set for use with fondant and voted most likely to suffer a tragic demise in the disposal).  Not pictured are my baking sheets, also from Pampered Chef.

5.  Allow the masses to run amok with 2/3 of your available cookie dough, supervising/advising/getting directly involved enough to forestall injuries, produce some yummy vaguely snowflake-ish looking cookies and even get a few worth decorating and distributing to friends, then send the help away to wash up and have "quiet" time (we use the term loosely) and peacefully crank out  beautiful specimens from the last roll of cookie dough.

6. Decorate cookies to look like snowflakes:  this is the deceptively easy stage.  Buy Wilton White Cookie Icing and Edible Cake Sparkles (and once again don't even think about what might be in them.  The icing looks exactly like a bottle of Elmer's glue and I can't help thinking there's a reason for that).

Here's the finished product (you'll note that only one has gotten the full treatment thus far!).  We store them in the freezer or at least out on the porch where they'll stay really cold, except for the family batch which will likely be consumed at a rapid rate.

Pumpkin Pie Redemption

A few weeks back, after my blogpost about pie, I had a hankering for Pumpkin Pie.  So, one day Jeremy and I made one together.  We made a crumb crust out of ginger snaps (pulverising cookies in the food processor was AWESOME!).  Jeremy also had a lot of fun helping me measure out the spices and mix the filling in a bowl, although there was much nose-wrinkling over the smell of raw pumpkin puree.  We filled our sweet pie crust and put it in the oven.  This is one of those recipes that calls for a high temperature for the first 10 minutes or so and then you turn it down to something a bit more reasonable.  The timer went of for the temp change and Jeremy came running in to help with that.  Then we were both off to other things.  I was in the family room.  I kept smelling the pie and at one point it smelled a little burny, so I went and looked at it.  It looked ok, although the crust was getting a little dark.  I chalked it up to the glass pan and thought maybe I shouldn't have used that....  By the time the buzzer went off, the poor little pie was reminiscent of an old black cast-iron frying pan.  When I turned off the oven I discovered that the temperature was on 450!  although I was certain I turned it down at the appointed time.  It's possible that someone bumped the dial (it spins very easily) and it's also possible that someone "helped" again after I left the room.  Either way, I should have given my nose more credit and rescued the pie much earlier.

Dessert that night was pumpkin pie filling scooped from the cast-iron carcass and doused with whipped cream.  And No, I did not take pictures of it.
The rest got dumped the following trash day.  It was very disheartening.
For Thanksgiving, I repeated the entire process--minus the temperature control debacle--and enjoyed sweet, spiced redemption.  Mmmmmm...

Time For Pie

When I started this blog and wrote the blurb off to the right hand side there, I predicted that I would "mostly just write about food" but running posts have dramatically overshadowed baking posts--who'd have guessed?

So, it's time for a post about Pie, which will neatly encompass both subjects.

On a side note, James, who is customarily greeted by his Aunt Helen with "Who's my pumpkin pie?!", will frequently, out of the blue, with a big smile on his face, just say "Pie." for no apparent reason.  It's just this thing he does.  And yet, he's not much of a pie eater....odd.

Baking Pie
The kids recently helped me make an apple pie.  What's funny is that they'd all rather bake it than eat it, and they'd rather prepare it than bake it.  In other words, the great attraction isn't so much "baking with mommy" as it is "cranking the apple peeler-corer-slicer, making a mess, and fighting over the measuring spoons".  But I'm still going to say that they love baking with mommy.  Anyway...here's some proof that fun was had and a pie was created (not sure why the pix came out orangey...). 

I popped the raw pie in the chest freezer and ran away with Alan for the weekend (see my post on Greatness) and Mary pulled it out and baked it in time for our return.  Yummm!

Running for Pie
Go here (but don't forget to come back afterwards) and read Emilie's post about Turkey Trek 2010, aka "the Race for Pie".  The Marks-Soule-Donahey clan will be there in full force--join us if you are so inclined!
Turkey Trek 2009 was supposed to be my first race ever.  Emilie's facebook invitation a year ago was the catalyst that finally started me running.  Sure, I'd been reading her blog for a while, marveling at her running accomplishments, and getting overly emotional about her marathon adventure. And Yes, on accasion I'd heard "you should take up running" from her, from Jenn, from my husband....  But I had always scoffed and said "I don't think so" with a look on my face that said "Me? run?? you're crazy!"  And then Emilie sent that little facebook invitation.  I don't remember exactly what (if any) personal note she included, but what I heard was "You can do this. You should do this. This is fun. Come join us..."  like a siren from the sea.  And I said to myself  "Four miles.  I can walk four miles." And very quietly, just to myself, I said "and maybe I could learn to run by then."  And that same day I started Hal Higdon's 30/30 program on the rec center track.  But apparently, what the gods heard was "Oh YEAH!  I can WALK that! And I'm gonna RUN, too. It'll be EASY!"  and they cried "HUBRIS!" the way residents of Salem used to cry "WITCH!" and tossed a lightning bolt at my ankle during zumba class so I could not, in fact, walk four miles on Thanksgiving morning.  So last year, I showed up anyway, with my air-caste and my canned goods and my camera and my mom (who was there to make sure I didn't do something foolish) and we gave the group a good send-off and then I went home and finished my cleaning and baking (yes, including a pie) and hosted Thanksgiving dinner, none of which was particularly gentle on the ankle.  We got someone to take a picture of the St. John's moms who were present and Jenn put it on a travel mug for me and I cherish it, even though it reminds me that I didn't do the run.

me, April, Emilie, Jenn, Anne-Marie

I think it was knowing that feeling even on such a small scale that drove me to do the Half even though I was ill-prepared and miserable with shingles.  So I'm really excited for this year, for a new picture, (although we'll all miss you, Jenn!) and for this wonderful incentive to have all my preparations done before Thanksgiving so I can really enjoy the whole day...from morning run until evening pie.