Granola

I love granola, but simply cannot justify paying the high prices for pre-made stuff at the store. I admit: we used to occasionally buy some from the bulk section at WinCo, but now we live 3 states away from the nearest one, so that's out.

Finding a reliable recipe for basic granola was challenging! A lot of recipes include stuff I don't always have on hand. Beyond the ingredients quandary, I won't tell you how many batches I burned because the recipe temperatures (which I naively trusted) were too high. Even crockpot granola was a big flop -- my slow cooker apparently cooks too hot. Disappointing!

Enter Chowhound's Basic Granola recipe. Even this, as written, had a too-long ingredients list, but I've tweaked it to my liking and will forever stand by the recipe as follows. I found the cinnamon gave the granola a burned taste, so I omit it.

Thomas loves this so much, he wishes I would quadruple it more often; but I find doubling it usually gets us by at this stage. Plus, it really isn't exactly "healthy" -- it's a lot of oil and sugar to work off if you eat it in the quantities I'd like to.

Granola

3 cups rolled oats
3 Tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 250°F.
2. Mix oats, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. 
3. Mix everything else in a separate bowl. Microwave briefly (20-40 seconds) to make it runnier. 
4. Pour wet ingredients over dry ingredients and mix well until everything is moistened. 
5. Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Pour and spread mixture over parchment paper.
6. Bake 20 minutes at 250°F; remove from oven. Use a metal spatula to turn areas of granola over on baking sheet little by little. This will ensure you get some big chunks or bunches of granola (rather than just the teeny tiny pieces resulting from stirring).
7. Bake another 15-20 minutes at 250°F. Remove from oven.
8. Let cool on baking sheet (unless it’s starting to burn; if so, pour into a bowl). 
9. Once room temperature, pour into a ziploc bag to keep crunchy.

We eat this most often as a cold cereal, drenched in milk; we also like it on yogurt/parfaits or, honestly, just as crispy handfuls out of the bag :)

Grandma Lee's Chicken & Dumplings

While living at home, it was not uncommon (especially for my younger sister's birthday) for my mother to put a chicken in the slow cooker and make dumplings for dinner. She used a recipe that her mother, my grandmother Lillie Lee, used.

My grandparents were originally from Missouri. They moved to California in the 1940s and that is where my mother was born. My grandparents stuck to their southern cooking styles - fried chicken was one of my grandma's favorite foods, and my grandpa loved beans.

We enjoyed this yummy meal with some friends recently. We hope you like it, too!

Grigsbys & Bradshaws

Chicken...
1 whole chicken
1 slow-cooker/crockpot
spices : sage, rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper
enough water to cover the chicken in your crockpot

1. Thaw chicken, if it is frozen (preferably in the fridge for about 2 days). Remove it from its packaging and rinse it. You will probably have to remove the neck and giblets from the breast hollow.
2. Place chicken in slow-cooker. Season with a lot of sage, then with rosemary and thyme to taste. Add some salt and pepper. (You can add quite a bit of salt, because you will add a lot of water)
3. Add water until chicken is covered or nearly covered.
4. Slow-cook until done; it took about 5-6 hours for ours.
5. Once cooked, remove most/all of the broth, placing broth in a pot that can be placed on the stovetop. You can take your chicken apart at this point, for ease in serving.

chicken

spices

cooked chicken

...& Dumplings
2 cups flour
1 egg
1 tsp salt
water
flour for rolling out dough

1. Combine ingredients.
2. Add water "'til it looks right" - you will want to end up with a thick, sticky dough.
3. Pour dough out onto a flat, floured surface. You will want quite a bit of flour. Roll out your dough to about 1/4" thickness.
4. Using a pizza cutter, cut dough into strips and then into squares about 2" * 2".
5. Boil chicken broth on the stove, and once at a rolling boil, add dumplings a few at a time. If you add too many, they will clump together.
6. They will all be ready for you to eat after a few minutes of cooking.

We usually used a slotted spoon to remove the dumplings from the broth and served them up with the chicken. The broth does not keep very well, as a lot of the flour from the dumplings is left inside.

removing broth from original location (crockpot)

dry ingredients

adding water

this is about the right consistency

dough, amply floured and ready to roll out

cutting dumplings into squares

dropping dumplings into boiling broth

cooked dumplings

My family's favorite side dish with this meal is something Thomas has recently termed "carrotized honey." It is cooked carrots, with honey added to make them even sweeter.

Carrots with Honey
fresh carrots, we used 4
a pad of butter (approx. 1 Tbsp)
about 2 Tbsp honey

1. Cut carrots into bite-sized pieces and boil until tender.
2. Drain water from carrots.
3. Add butter and honey to carrots and serve.

carrots with honey

 oxox