Cocoa Puff Day

Apologies to anyone looking for information about actual Cocoa Puffs (TM).  

In my head, I call today Cocoa Puff Day.  It's first day in spring that I go out into the garden to stir in all the little bunny poops into the soil.

I have mixed feelings about rabbits in my garden.  On one hand, they ate clear through the bark of my brand new honeycrisp apple tree, so I hate them.  On the other hand, they give me free fertilizer every year and seem to wait by my garage so that anytime I come home, they're hopping down the alley looking super cute.  So I love them.  (Cute + free fertilizer) > (Sad, doomed tree)

Do you see the little Cocoa Puffs?  

I've vacillated over the years in my "cleaning up the garden before winter" philosophy.  Some years I clear everything out at the end of fall so that I have nice, clean beds for spring.  I usually feel very accomplished and organized those years.

Other years I'll feel lazy and just leave all the tomato plants and broccoli stems to rot.  The downside to this is that when pulling soft, cold broccoli plants from the garden, it's hard to get a good enough grip to pull them out as their skin slips right off.  And I've watched enough CSI to imagine that this is what it would be like trying to pull a dead body out of the ground.  Ew.



The past few years I've found a happy medium between the two methods: I clear out the beds that get the most sun so that they're ready for early planting in spring.  But I leave some plants remaining in the shadier beds so that the bunnies will snack on my leftover collard stems all winter and leave behind their little poops.  Win, win!

The next step?  Not-so-patiently waiting until it might be safe to plant!  It feels like spring today, but it just snowed two days ago, so I'm trying not to plant any seeds just yet.

Too Much Mustard

 I'm on a mission right now to clean out my kitchen.  I'm reading American Wasteland and feel a little embarrassed by the number of varieties of mustard in my fridge.  I count 7 now, but that's only because we finished off the last little bit of 3 jars this past week.

It's not just the mustard, though.  I've got a whole shelf of hot sauces and varieties of beans I've never even used before.

So here's what I've been eating to clean out the foods I've been neglecting at the back of the fridge and pantry.

1.  Black beans with millet, pickled limes, cumin-coriander-apricot chutney and harissa kale chips.  (pickled these limes 3 years ago)



2.  Roasted broccoli and carrots with WW Israeli couscous and last year's frozen pesto.  (Just enough couscous left for a couple servings.  Been sitting in the pantry for months.  I also poured a little thinned-out mustard over the broccoli and called it a mustard sauce.)














3. Barbecue pinto beans and chipotle lime Gardein strips over romaine lettuce and carrots.  With ranch dressing, of course.  (Finishing off some barbecue sauce and pintos).

 4. Butternut squash ravioli with edamame and pesto.
(Frozen ravioli.  Frozen edamame.  Frozen pesto.  Cleaning out the freezer!)

5. Chora dal na pooda with barley, saag, apricot chutney.  (The last of the hulled barley and finally tried the chora dal!).

I'll have more to share soon.  I have weird cereal no one wants, urad dal, and so many dried garden herbs.  It feels like Iron Chef trying to plan my meals around these ingredients.

So simple, so good

I intended to make something complex, and maybe just a little fancy-pants, when I put some cubed rutabagas and some wild rice on to boil.  But I got hungry and just ate boiled rutabagas and wild rice with a little fresh thyme and ground black pepper.

It was amazing and perfectly simple.

Banana Sundae

Not quite as good as an ice cream sundae, but the toppings are the same.

Chocolate Fluffer Nutter Cookies

Just when you think Dreena Burton's "You got peanut butter in my chocolate" cookies couldn't get any better, try adding marshmallows to them.

I call these Chocolate Fluffer Nutter Cookies.  Fluffer Nutter sandwiches are crazy and probably no one should really eat them, except maybe as a dessert.  But in a cookie, combining peanut butter and marshmallows seems perfectly reasonable, right?  Especially with chocolate.

The original recipe uses barley flour and they're really good that way, but I wanted to make these gluten free so we could all enjoy them.  So my adaptions are below:

Chocolate Fluffer Nutter Cookies
Adapted from Dreena Burton's recipe

1/4 cup evaporated cane sugar
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 cup millet flour
1/4 cup tapioca starch
1 tsp xanthan gum
3 Tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 handful (about 8) vegan marshmallows, cut into 4

1/4 cup chocolate chips

1/4 cup maple syrup

3 Tbsp agave nectar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup peanut butter

Preheat oven to 350 F.  In a mixing bowl, whisk together the sugar, salt, millet flour, tapioca starch, xanthan gum, cocoa, baking powder, and baking soda until the lumps are gone.  Then stir in marshmallow pieces and chips until they are coated in the flour mixture.

In a separate jar or bowl, mix together the maple syrup, agave, vanilla and oil.  Add to the flour and mix until a thick dough forms.  Then drop/drizzle bits of peanut butter (mine was refrigerated, so it was lumps of peanut butter) onto the dough and use a knife to cut it into the dough, leaving lumps and swirls.  Scoop rounded tablespoons onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Bake for 11 minutes, then let cool completely.

Fat on Fat on Fat

You know that 2010-2012 trend of putting bacon on and in everything?  That's what my life has been like the past few weeks, except with coconut bacon.  Perhaps you've already noticed.


































Well, tonight I outdid myself and made an avocado and coconut bacon sandwich drizzled with super good olive oil.


This is basically a fat sandwich.  It was incredible.

Pile It High

There is something magical about the combination of ranch dressing and barbecue sauce.  Especially on a salad.  Also with croutons and coconut bacon.  

It's a lot easier to make salads for dinner when you keep crazy good salad toppings like these around.  I've eaten mixing bowl salads three times in the past week.  This one has locally grown baby spinach, chopped romaine, shredded yellow carrots, croutons, coconut bacon, locally made smoked blue cheese, baked tofu soaked in my bestie's homemade whiskey barbecue sauce, and ranch dressing. This is a filling salad.  Be sure you pile the spinach and lettuce high to balance all the rich toppings.

My buddy Jesse says I only like barbecue and ranch together because I'm from Texas, but I think everyone should try it.  I enjoyed this salad while watching an episode of King of the Hill.  Hank Hill thinks you should go prep some salad toppings now so that you're prepared.

His words of wisdom on tonight's episode: "Plan ahead.  Then when stuff happens, you'll be prepared."