Home made yogurt and granola

After seeing Stephanie's post at A Year of CrockPotting on making yogurt in your crock pot I was very intrigued. For her great post and instructions, including cost analysis click here.
I opted to use fancy-schmancy full-fat Greek fage for my active-culture add-in. I also used local whole milk and I really think that the high quality ingredients really made a difference. I did not add the gelatin and was perfectly happy with the thickness and consistency. It is really tasty. If you have been punishing yourself eating fat-free yogurt, or even grosser, fat-free/sugar-free yogurt allow yourself this pleasure. It does not need to be homemade, Stonyfield makes a tasty one, just give it a try. I converted about six months ago and it is well worth the extra calories. As a plus, it is so yummy you can pretty much eat it plain without 16 teaspoons of sugar dumped in to make it mildly palatable.

That said, to offset the milk fats (mmmmmm, milk fats) you can sprinkle a bit of this on top.

Quick and Healthy Granola
3 cups oats (quick or original- skip the instant)
1/2 cup roughly chopped nuts (I used almonds and walnuts)
1 T cinnamon
1 t ginger
1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce
2-3 T agave nectar
splash of vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine the oats, nuts, cinnamon, and ginger in a good-sized bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the remaining ingredients and mix well. Add wet ingredients to the oat mixture and combine well. Spread granola on to a foil-lined cookie sheet/jellyroll pan that has been sprayed with a bit of cooking spray. Pot it in the oven for 30-40 minutes giving it a stir every now and again.

This is not a super sweet, decadent granola. But lets face it granola, while often very delicious falls into the category of "comically unhealthy" foods that are disguised as health food.

Not as boring as you would think.....

I have a serious soft spot (or crunchy, if you will) for crackers. They are tasty, munchable, and portable. The drawback is that you can eat 7 million without batting an eye and they are often filled with crud that 1. does not need to be in them and 2. is really not that good for you. That said, I decided to make my own. Not too shabby.

I tweaked and based this on fairly traditional cracker recipes. Very simple, not a lot of action but ultimately a pretty tasty ending

I mixed about 1 1/4 cups flour with a hearty amount of cumin, a few shakes of chili power, and salt.


With a nice glug of olive oil and enough water to bring the dough together, it will form a nice firm dough. This ball yielded two trays of crackers.


I rolled the dough out directly on parchment with a bit of flour trying to make it nice and even and thin. Score/cut the dough in to the shape you desire and give each one a nice poke with a fork and a sprinkle of coarse salt.


These babies get popped in a 400 degree oven for around 15 minutes, till they are crispy and smell nice and toasty.


All in all they are not the buttery, transfatty crackers you will get at your local grocer, but they definitely held up to some homemade hummus or a soft cheese. Now I just need to test other flavors to mix in.....

Pupusas

The other day I stumbled across a great post on Gild the Voodoolily, in which she reviewed a Salvadorian restaurant that looked totally amazing. Needless to say the there are no Salvadorian restaurants anywhere within reasonable driving distance...

Thus a kitchen experiment was found. While I did not make a full on Salvadorian menu, I tried my hand a Pupusas. These are essentially a little pancake made out of Masa harina and filled with virtually anything you want, generally a soft cheese and meat, or cheese and beans. We opted for the bean cheese combo because really how can you go wrong.

We initially had tough time getting the filling not to squeeze out when flattening, but we got it down. These are pretty labor intensive and I wish I could say that they were worth it. They were not especially bad, just unremarkable. The hubby was content to mow on them, after my first I was content to munch the leftover cheesy beans.

Sorry that there are no process pics, the camera was being a bit cranky. This is also why the final pic is a bit grainy and cruddy, camera phones can only do so much.

Hopefully I will get a chance for some fun feed posts over the next week or so. I will have about a week and a half off before my LAST CLASS in my masters.