De Baking Psychopath

Happy holidays! I am still trying to catch up on recipes from the last couple of months, sorry for the delays! Back in mid-Fall, I had half a can of pumpkin left over from making the pumpkin cookies, but I didn't want to make just any old pumpkin bread with it. I scanned though my Google Reader and found this gem of a recipe from Sugarcrafter and set out to make this as my next installment of my granola addiction. Because the pumpkin makes up a good portion of the wet ingredients, this granola is more on the chewy side, and not as crispy-crunchy as other recipes. It's very fragrant and deep flavored, great on yogurt, and it is a good recipe to use up some leftover canned pumpkin. Pumpkin Spice Granola (adapted from Sugarcrafter ) Ingredients: 4 cups old-fashioned oats 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 1/8 tsp cloves 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds (pepitas) 1/2 cup pecans, coarsely chopped 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup pumpkin puree 1/4 cup honey Ins...

Here is installment 2 of the Pandora box of granola recipes that I have unleashed upon myself!  I don't remember what I was searching for, but I found online that the Metropolitan Bakery granola won a blind taste test at Epicurious.com . Looking at their ingredient list online, I discovered that the famed granola bore a strong resemblance to the contents "Almond Oat Cereal" recipe that is in their cookbook, so I decided to see what the fuss was all about. This granola, after eating the Bedford Springs Granola for a few weeks, felt sort of pedestrian due to the lack of fragrant coconut, but as I ate more of it, I grew to enjoy and appreciate the pure oat and nut flavor. The milk powder also lent a nice sweetness to the clusters. Also, the wheat germ was deeply nutty and fragrant. One thing that was not in the original recipe that I ended up adding was salt. Just a pinch of salt made a huge difference in the flavor and tastiness of the granola, so definitely don...

This is the best granola I've ever had.  No, this may be the best granola in the world. About a month ago, my program had our annual retreat at the Bedford Springs Resort, a very very nice resort known for its golf course and mineral hot springs. It's almost like stepping back into time when you are there because it looks like a plantation house from the 1800s, and the halls are full of old-timey photographs from hundreds of years of visitors to the Springs. Anyway, I woke up insanely early on Saturday and couldn't go back to sleep, so we were the first ones there at breakfast and had a few one-on-one conversations with the kitchen staff, who were busily putting all the food out for the breakfast buffet. One kind staff member encouraged me to definitely try their granola, "it's house made and really good." Well. I didn't need more encouragement than that. So I got a container of yogurt, and tried this granola. It was crunchy, deeply caramel in...

I'm starting to run again. I decided to set myself some running goals, such as a certain number of miles to be run/week, irregardless of how much I run in any one given session. The treadmill is my preferred mode of running. Maybe it's the control freak in me, but I like knowing exactly how fast I'm running, and I like to be pushed to maintain the pace I set by the belt moving continuously. No stoplights, crazy drivers, slow-walking pedestrians, random 15% gradient hills (!!), or my own inertia to distract and slow me down. My Achilles heel many a day has been going running right after work (basically, dinnertime) but not eating a snack or something to tide me over and give me some energy to run. Which sometimes then results in me cutting my workout short because I fall victim to mild acute hypoglycemia and become lightheaded and nauseated. So my purpose in making these energy bars is two-fold: 1) in preparation for my increasingly-frequent running workouts as I work up...