Random thoughts

The Christmas holiday is over and so is the hustle and bustle. Sadly the holiday itself went too quickly. Hope was given up on making lots of homeade gifts but that's ok better planning next year. So it became the year of the pizzelles gave a light sweet treat in the shape of a snowflake. With all the bustle also forgot to take pictures of how they are made...ooops!

Well for now I can at least give the random recipes that we had a couple of weeks ago.

Banana Bread with Chocolate and Crystallized Ginger

The crystallized ginger was well worth it! This recipe is from A Homemade Life but the recipe called for eggs and yogurt which I substituted and hoped for the best. For the eggs I did the baking soda mixture and for the yogurt I used 1/4 cup soy milk mixed with 1/4 teaspoon cider vinegar. Banana bread just got better even with a few ingredient modifications.

Granola modified once again

This recipe I got from Wendy's blog because I wanted to try to make my own granola. Again a few ingredient modifications no nuts for this family and no one would be crazy for dried cranberries sooo... instead of mixing the oats with something healthy I mixed in some dairy free chocolate chips, I then followed the directions for the mixture and poured it over the oats and chocolate chips. Soon realized I mixed melted chocolate chips into the oats. Uh oh...well then I baked them for a total of 10-15 minutes because I used the quick cooking oats. With that many recipe modifications I wasn't sure what this would taste like. Sure enough another hit for this family.

Actually I made 2 batches one was the dairy free chocolate chips and the other was vanilla chips. Next time I'm thinking sunflower seeds and raisins. Goodbye quaker oats granola bars for a while.

Cauliflower not mac n' cheese

This recipe was from the last issue of Kiwi it suggested instead of using pasta when making mac n cheese use cauliflower. My caulflower in the cheese looked watery and bland not too appealing to me soooo.... what did I do? I seasoned it with Mrs. Dash (use whatever you like) and then mixed with white rice. Much more appealing and tasty!

Well that's the end of today's random thoughts. Looking forward to another very cold and short nature walk into the woods with the kids in search of branches.