Tag Archives: ingredients

Homemade Granola

The inspiration behind making my own homemade granola: spotting a $1.99 bag of coconut flakes in Trader Joe’s this weekend. First of all, do you know how delicious coconut flakes are all on their own? The second these were spotted, my friend Stevie told me how they would be perfect in granola. What a brilliant friend I have!
So I bought a bag and was told that Sunny Anderson’s granola was a fantastic recipe to go off of. But, if I’m going to make some homemade granola, I’m going to make it with the ingredients I love most. Inspired by Sunny’s recipe, I took the base of her granola and molded into my own personal Happy Trails granola combo.

homemade granola recipe

Here’s how I made it:

  1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees
  2. On the stove, heat up 1/4 cup vegetable oil + 1/2 cup maple syrup (the good stuff, folks. no Aunt Jemima crap) + 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Whisk these 3 ingredients together just until they start to bubble. Remove from stove and let cool
  3. In a mixing bowl, stir together 3 cups rolled oats + 1/4 dark brown sugar + a pinch or two of salt +1/2 cup chopped walnuts
  4. Once cooled, pour the vegetable oil/maple syrup/cinnamon combo over top of the mixing bowl ingredients. Be sure to mix these well.
  5. In a small bowl whisk together 2 egg whites and pour over top of the other ingredients. Mix all ingredients well.
  6. Spread the granola out on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper
  7. Bake for 10 minutes, remove from oven and flip the oats. Repeat this 4 times. This will take a total of 40 minutes.
  8. Remove granola from the oven and let the ingredients cool.
  9. Once cooled, add 1/2 cup of dried cranberries + 1/4 cup coconut flakes to the mixture.

If you want more flavor — here are a few other fabulous ingredient ideas: dried banana chips, dried mango (for a summer-time granola), slivered almonds instead of walnuts, sunflower seeds, pistachios, and honey. And if you have a massive sweet tooth — throw in some chocolate chunks!

This granola on top of just regular plain yogurt is to-die-for! But of course it tastes fabulous on raspberry yogurt too!

Lobster Rolls A New Way

This past weekend, my boyfriend and I found ourselves traveling down to the beautiful sunny Florida for a friend’s wedding. After flying into Palm Beach, we found ourselves starved for lunch — we quickly put on our bathing suits and rushed down to the hotel’s outdoor restaurant for lunch. The menu was filled of tasty options, but the moment we saw “Lobster and Shrimp Roll” on the menu, we couldn’t resist!

lobster roll ingredients

When our food arrived, we may have done a double-take on the food. We were a bit thrown off by the tortilla wrapped sandwich on the plate in front of us. “Excuse me,” I didn’t waste any time asking the waitress about this, “but we ordered the lobster roll. What is this?” Well, it turned out it was the lobster roll.

Is this a Florida thing? Or is this a new food trend on how to make lobster rolls? A soft tortilla wrapped lobster roll is what we ended up having for lunch. It was full of flavor with the classic mayo textured lobster roll that we are used to, plus the gigantic chunks of meaty shrimp add a beautiful flavor and extra rich consistency to every bite.

I can’t help but admit that after growing up my early years of life in New England… I think there’s only one true way to make a lobster roll — and that is with the split top buns that are buttered and put on the stove as if you’re making a grilled cheese. It adds flavor, it adds a crispy consistency when you bite into the bun. Why would you pass that up for a tortilla wrap?

Campbell’s Green Bean Casserole

Green Bean CasseroleA traditional Thanksgiving staple is the classic green bean casserole. A Thanksgiving dinner table would be incomplete with out it and luckily it is probably the easiest thing to make. This year, I spent the holiday in Chicago with my boyfriend and his family. My boyfriend’s sister can cook but she isn’t extraordinarily kitchen savvy so I gave her a lot of credit when she wanted to make Campbell’s Green Bean Casserole all by herself. She pulled the recipe out of a People Magazine issue that had an advertisement for the classic dish on an advertisement. I watched her make and bake the entire dish! You can either use the frozen green beans or you can use the fresh ones. I watched as my boyfriend’s sister washed and chopped up some fresh green beans — she ran into some difficulty when reading the recipe because the recipe called for 4 cups cooked green beans. How on earth do you measure 4 cups of cooked green beans? So, she guessed — luckily she did a good job. After steaming the fresh beans she mixed in a separate bowl the milk, soy sauce, cream of mushroom soup, and two thirds cup onions. She then poured the mix over the green beans, tossed it all up and added some more of the crunch onions to the top, she then put it in the oven. It came out gorgeous!

I managed to have a few bites of this before dinner and I was so proud of her! It came out so tasty! And the flavors were much better with the use of fresh green beans instead of the easy to use frozen green beans. The texture was crunchy, but of course cooked enough. When she reheated the dish later, she added some extra onions on the top so they would be nice and crunchy.

I don’t know why we don’t make Green Bean Casseroles more often, year-round. It’s such an easy dish to put together and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like it. Here’s the recipe from the Campbell’s website:

    Ingredients:

  • 1 can (10 3/4 ounces) Campbell’s® Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup (Regular, 98% Fat Free or Healthy Request®)
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 teaspoon soy sauce
  • Dash ground black pepper
  • 4 cups cooked cut green beans
  • 1 1/3 cups French’s® French Fried Onions
    Directions:

  • stir the soup, milk, soy sauce, black pepper, beans and 2/3 cup onions in a 1 1/2-quart casserole.
  • Bake at 350°F. for 25 minutes or until the bean mixture is hot and bubbling. Stir the bean mixture. Sprinkle with the remaining onions.
  • Bake for 5 minutes or until the onions are golden brown.