Recipe: Homemade Granola From Scratch!

With a family of six, we go through cereal, FAST. Buying cereal can cost us ridiculous amounts of money considering the fact that a box of cereal is typically gone in a day. I came across a recipe on a blog for homemade granola, and have started making my own, loosely based on that recipe.

 
Here is the basic process and TOTALLY customizable recipe! Pick your favorite nuts and favorite dried fruits (I usually pick a good trail mix and then separate the dried fruits from the nuts)

• 2lbs of Thick cut old fashioned rolled oats (can be bought in 2lb bags or can be purchased from the bulk bins)
• 1cup Coconut Oil (melted in a double boiler setup)
• 2 Cups of dried fruits
• 1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
• 2 cups of nuts
• 1 1/2 cups Honey or maple Syrup
• 1 cup flaked coconut (optional)

Preheat the oven to 325. Mix the Oats with the  brown sugar, coconut oil and honey/syrup, and put in a roasting pan, put in the oven for 15 minutes and add the nuts. Put back into the oven for 30 minutes, stirring after 15 minutes.

Add the dried fruits (and keep in mind, raisins or other fruits like them will swell up as they cook) and put back into the oven for 15 minutes, stir and then bake for 15 more minutes.

Stir in the flaked coconut (if using) and bake for 5 more minutes so the coconut can toast up.

Take out of the oven and let cool (stirring occasionally to help it cool faster) and once it has cooled down, store in an air tight container in a cool cupboard!

Recipe: Bean, Rice & Chicken Tacos on Homemade Flour Tortillas

We LOVE homemade Mexican food in our house, like we eat it any chance we get.

Yesterday our plan for dinner had been to have Crockpot Orange Chicken on rice, but we had to run some errands, and bake some bread, and by the time we got home, it was too late to start the chicken, so we had to go and find something else for dinner.

I had picked up some Avacados and some Fronteras Guacamole Mix (Frontera brand makes some of the BEST - CRAP FREE mixes!) which helped me decide to come up with a Mexican inspired meal.

I've been wanting to try homemade flour tortillas, so figured since hubby already had the kitchen covered in flour from baking bread, we might as well give it a shot!

He worked the dough, I cooked the tortillas, it was a beautiful pairing - However, I SO can't wait for our new kitchen to be done (I've got some pics of progress to post on that, speaking of which), the current temporary kitchen has FAR too little room.

The tortillas were surprisingly simple (however the tortillas we got by following the original recipe were too small so here is our modified version for larger tortillas!)

Flour Tortilla Recipe

• 3 cups of flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup warm water 

Combine everything and mix until it forms a dough.

Roll the dough into a big ball on a floured surface and separate into 2-3 inch balls. Let the balls of dough rest for 30 minutes. After the dough has rested flatten each ball with your hands and then roll into thin circles. In the meantime, heat a flat non-stick skillet on the stove top at med-high temp (it will be ready when you sprinkle water on it and the water instantly bubbles and sputters and evaporates).  When  the pan is ready, cook the flattened dough one or two at a time (depending on the size of your skillet). Use a flat spatula to flatten the air bubbles in the tortillas as they cook. Flip when the bottom starts to form slightly brown spots. Cook until the 2nd side has similar brown spots. Try not to overcook so the tortillas don't turn hard, but don't worry too much, they are pretty hard to screw up!

Since the meal wasn't planned out ahead of time, we had to come up with a plan for a filling, so we threw together some rice, beans and chicken with some homemade taco seasoning. (Note: This would have been TONS better if we'd had Cilantro to top things with, but we were out)

Bean, Rice & Chicken Taco Filling

• 1 Cup brown rice (dry measure) - Cooked according to package
• 1 Can black beans - or beans of your choice (or 1/4 cup dry beans, cooked according to package)
• 1 Package Organic Chicken Tenders - cut into cubes
• 1 Onion - chopped
• 2 Minced Garlic Cloves (or a teaspoon of pre-minced garlic)
• Chili Powder
• Cumin
• Celery Salt
• Olive Oil

Put a splash of olive oil into a frying pan (roughly 2 or 3 tablespoons), add the chopped onion and garlic and cook until the onion becomes transparent. Add the chicken and cook through.

Add seasonings to taste (roughly 1 or 2 teaspoons each of Chili Powder and Cumin, 1/2 tsp. celery salt), stir until chicken is thoroughly coated. Add beans and rice, stir to mix. Add more seasonings until it reaches your desired flavor intensity (for spicier food add some crushed red pepper - My kids can only handle so much flavor, so those types of dishes are reserved for date nights when it's just the hubster and me).

Serve with a side of guacamole and chips or salad!

(I linked to this post over at Mostly Homemade Mondays on Frugal By Choice, Cheap by Necessity!)





*Full Disclosure: this post contains affiliate links and should you choose to purchase anything featured in any links in this post, I will receive a small credit for sending you - However, any companies mentioned above are in no way compensating me for posting my honest opinions here.

Recipe: Homemade Iced Tea Lemonade - Best Ever

When I gave up drinking Soda, in search of a healthier lifestyle, I was lost on what to drink. I know water is the best choice, I'm not a milk or juice drinker, and since soda was out of the question, I had to come up with SOMETHING. I opted for Iced Tea. Not the kind you buy at the store that's full of that HFCS and other crap no one can pronounce either. Homemade, 100% natural ICED TEA... with LEMON.


It started out as just plain iced tea with some sugar, and I was hardly impressed. After making a jug of homemade lemonade I decided to mix the two and Homemade Iced Tea Lemonade (my own version of Half and Half) was born.

Best Ever Iced Tea Lemonade

Ingredients:
1 Gallon hot water
10 Standard sized Tea bags (we usually use orange pekoe) 
 2/3 cup Sugar
1 cup Real Lemon Juice

Start by putting your 10 tea bags into your gallon of water

Let set for a few hours (I try to let mine set overnight, but 1 hour will suffice for decent tea)

Add your 2/3 cup of sugar

and then your 1 cup of Lemon Juice

Mix together well, serve immediately with ice or refrigerate until chilled first!

Recipe: Oven French Toast Sticks

 My mother got married a few weeks ago, and we got sent home with about 8 bags of finger rolls that weren't used for sandwiches at the reception. I had NO idea what we were going to do with ALL those finger rolls, but creativity struck and I came up with the idea of French Toast Sticks! I froze them until I had a chance to do it. The kids are off school today and it's rainy and dreary so I figured this was a great day to try it out! Here's what I did:


Cut finger rolls into 3 slices and then slice each in half (each finger roll should make 6 sticks)

Place on greased cookie sheet, brush with olive oil, put in oven at 350 to toast (I turned the oven on, and put them in the oven until the buzzer to tell me the oven was preheated went off... should be dry to the touch, not browned, second batch took about 6 minutes)

Mix 3 eggs with about 2 tablespoons of Cinnamon/Sugar mix (Leftover from Monkey Bread Muffins)

Dip toasted finger roll sticks into egg mixture until coated
to your desired consistency and place single layer on cookie sheet. Make sure sticks are not touching.

Bake at 350 for 5 minutes and then flip
Bake for 5 more minutes

Serve with your favorite topping!

These would have been better, in my opinion, with REAL Maple Syrup, but we are out, so I drizzled them with Clover Honey instead. The kids loved them, and they made a yummy snack for me!

Recipe: Monkey Bread Muffins

So let's rewind, back to December 2011. I had just finished closing my consignment store and moving all of my stuff to storage, and it's my first week as a stay-at-home-mom in about 3 years... I'm bored out of my mind, not sure how to pass the time with my 2 1/2 year old who has either tagged along with me to work or gone to daycare since I opened my store.

We decided to make a fun breakfast of Monkey Bread Muffins! I don't follow a recipe for these, I just kinda wing it, but here's about how it works :)

First, get together your ingredients...

• Sugar (I used Organic Raw Cane Sugar)
• Grands Biscuits (any refrigerated biscuit should work)
• Cinnamon
• Powdered Sugar (Not Pictured)
• Water

Next, cut your biscuits into quarters... I used kitchen scissors to cut them into little triangles

Next you roll each quarter into a ball (or let your 2 1/2 year old squeeze them and THEN you roll them into balls!)

Put the balls into the plastic bag with about 1/4 cup each of Sugar and Cinnamon - I put 8 balls in at a time (2 biscuits worth) because that's what fits in one large muffin cup (we use the BIG muffin pans for this, but you can use the standard sized muffin pan and just put 5 or 6 "balls" in) ---- AND SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE!

After you have shaken the living daylights out of those balls of dough and cinnamon and sugar, you put them in the muffin pan, like so

Bake on 350 for about 20-30 minutes (will depend on your oven), start checking them around 20 minutes, pull gently on the top "ball" and if it pulls off some and still looks dough-y, it's not done, put it back in for 5 more minutes... While this bakes, work on your icing!

Put about 1/2 cup of powdered sugar in a cup, and slowly add warm water, stir with a fork until it reaches a thick enough consistency so that it will drizzle off your fork

After your muffins have finished baking, allow them to cool for 10 minutes or so, and then add your icing!

And then enjoy with Coffee or Hot Cocoa! As you can see here, my beautiful assistant enjoyed her hot cocoa BEFORE her Monkey Bread Muffin :)