Last post showed how to use Chocolate, Grain & Nut Butter Cereal to put together a fully flavorful energy igniting/energy sustaining breakfast bowl. In that post I mentioned that recipes are just suggested guides that can be altered to meet your specific taste and dietary needs.
And, even though that post featured Chocolate, Grain & Nut Butter Cereal as the main ingredient, you certainly can make that recipe – or something very much like it – using any cereal you like. True to that word, here’s what I’ll call a “twist on a twist” based on a breakfast I had in Germany years ago, “Bircher Muesli mit Obst und Yoghurt” (Muesli with fruit and yogurt), that usually comes in two separate bowls, as shown here.
It is certainly easy to see from the ingredients I use below to make what I call Whole Grain Cereal with Fresh Fruit & Kefir that my interpretation of the recipe is quite a bit different than what I had in Germany.
And, that’s exactly where the fun comes in – and all it takes is a little imagination and, sure, some risk taking, to make the most of that fun.
Click this link or any picture on this page for the Whole Grain Cereal with Fresh Fruit & Kefir Picture Book Recipe that you can use as is or vary however you like.
Next post: what exactly is kefir and why do I feature it so much?
Here’s one very easy, fully flavorful way I use the Chocolate, Grain & Nut Butter Cereal featured in the last post to put together a “fire me up and keep me going!” pre-ride sustained energy breakfast bowl made with…
…these ingredients.
I say “pre-ride” because cycling is what I do most, but this breakfast bowl works just as well to prepare for any physical activity: run, hike, gym, anything that requires sustained energy.
Regarding the recipe itself, as mentioned in the picture book directions you can get by clicking this link or any picture on this page,…
…what you see for ingredients here are only suggestions intended to inspire your imagination to make your own breakfast bowl all your own.
Last post was about how to repurpose a failed recipe. The Chocolate, Grain & Nut Butter Power Bars I tried to make didn’t work out as intended as solid bars that would stay together in bar form if taken along on a bike ride, run or hike. But the crumbling result, packed with fully flavorful ingredients, sure worked fine as a robust cereal rich with both “get up and go” fast fuel complex carbohydrates and energy sustaining protein and healthy fats – and tastes great!
The recipe for Chocolate, Grain & Nut Butter Power Cereal uses these ingredients…
…and is actually two recipes in one as it shows first how to cook quinoa if you want to use quinoa and don’t already have it cooked when you start putting the power cereal together.
Click this link or any picture on this page for a complete picture book recipe.
Next post will show how I use this cereal to power up before a good bike ride.
Mistakes? Ha! That’s just part of learning no matter how skilled you are in any field. And, no way to sugar coat it, the Chocolate, Grain & Nut Butter Power Bars I made recently, and intended to add to the recipe lineup here, just didn’t work out as planned – not even with the terrifically flavorful ingredients shown here.
The first signs regarding intended purpose as power bars: crumbling dough when I formed it a baking sheet. Then, cracks in the finished loaf (see the red arrows below), which was a clear sign the bars would fall apart easily, especially if tucked in a pocket for a hop on the bike or run.
The worst part: the flavor wasn’t as full on as I’d expected – and that happens.
But no way were all those terrific ingredients getting tossed in the trash. Instead, I did what the bars wanted to do anyway and crumbled them into a container to be “repurposed” as a chocolate-granola cereal and then…
…made this much more full-on flavorful chocolate, grain and nut butter cereal breakfast bowl.
I’ll get that picture book recipe out right after I first put together a purposely made picture book Chocolate, Grain & Nut Butter Power Cereal recipe.
Before getting to the very easy, fully flavorful improvisation, I want to finish the story from the last post about how to speed up pineapple ripening that I’ll lay out in this equation.
My unripe pineapple in a paper bag for 2 days = ripe pineapple
All right! With that freshly ripened pineapple good to go, I could then put together and shoot Pineapple, Berries, Nut Butter, Yogurt, Jam & Dried Fruit, which looks as shown below and is a quick and easy twist on the base Pineapple, Yogurt, Jam & Dried Fruit recipe.
Here’s all you need to make Pineapple, Berries, Nut Butter, Yogurt, Jam & Dried Fruit. And just as I mention in the picture book recipe, all the ingredients you see below work great together, but they’re only suggestions. Imagination is always your only limit to alternative or added ingredients you can use to make this richly flavorful dish all your own.
Click this link or any picture on this page for complete picture book directions.
April 19th, 2022 Blog, Fruit, How To & TipsComments Off on How to Speed Up Pineapple Ripening
At the end of the last post I promised I’d show how to improvise on very easy-to-make pineapple, yogurt & jam. That plan sounded fine until I realized that the pineapple I was going to use to make and shoot those directions wasn’t yet ripe even after I’d had it on top of my fridge for about a week, as shown below
No problem. Just another opportunity to improvise in a different manner. Though I’ve not done this with a pineapple before, I figured I could probably speed up the ripening process by doing what I do with other fruits and avocados that sometimes take days or longer to ripen out in the open.
Last night I put the pineapple in a paper bag (can’t use a plastic bag for this because plastic doesn’t allow for needed air exchange that makes ripening work; paper does),…
…then clipped the bag closed (because it would’t stay closed just by folding the bag top), and…
…put the bagged pineapple on top of the fridge, which I’ll now keep an eye on to see how quickly the pineapple ripens.
More soon!
April 11th, 2022 Blog, Breakfast, FruitComments Off on Pineapple, Yogurt, Jam, and Dried Fruit Picture Book Recipe
Last post showed how to ripen and cut a fresh pineapple as easily as possible. Here’s a fully flavorful, very easy-to-make way to enjoy cut pineapple for breakfast, lunch, dessert or as a refuel snack after pushing yourself physically. As always, the ingredients you see below are only suggestions. Use your imagination to make your pineapple, yogurt, jam, and dried fruit all yours!
Click this link or any picture on this page for an easy-to-follow step-by-step picture book recipe.
Next post: an example of how to improvise on this recipe.
April 8th, 2022 Blog, Breakfast, Fruit, How To & TipsComments Off on How to Ripen and Cut Fresh Pineapple Picture Book Directions
The sweet, tropical flavor and soft crunch and pop texture of fresh pineapple is just as fully satisfying on its own as it is mixed with other flavors. More about that later.
First, the picture book directions you can get by clicking this link or any picture on this page…
…show how to ripen a pineapple (that almost always comes to market underripe),…
…how to make a ripened pineapple take up less space in your refrigerator and…
…how to cut a pineapple as easy as possible.
Next blog: some easy-to-make pineapple recipes. All fun and full-on flavorful!
Last post earlier this week discussed what’s really in an ingredient and what that means to you, especially if you have dietary restrictions. Then, entirely coincidentally, this week I got a text from a good cycling bud asking whether to use sweetened or unsweetened coconut flakes and what type of chocolate chips to use to make Banana Nut Butter Power Bars. He couched his question with a note that his skills are pretty much limited to toasting Pop Tarts. Excellent on all fronts!
I loved the question! Right away, I tore down the old recipe to revise it with this more descriptive list of ingredients and…
…these new directions that you can get by clicking this link or any picture on this page.
Always glad to make changes – that’s “learning and adapting” life in action. And what I like best is hearing what works and doesn’t work for people actually using any recipe I put on this site so that I can help make your work – and mine – in the kitchen as easily fully flavorful as possible. That’s life enriched!
What really is in an ingredient needed to put together a recipe?
That question – and the idea of fairness – popped in my head while I was laying out the last post that compared the ingredients of a random sample of store bought packaged power bars…
…with a homemade power bar sandwich made with the ingredients shown here.
As shown above, the packaged bars all have their ingredients listed by quantity in order of the most used to least used ingredient.
I listed the ingredients used to make the power bar sandwich in the same way: whole grain bread; choice of honey, jam or cookie spread; nut butter; fresh fruit; raisins; and chocolate chips.
But my list doesn’t say it all. Sure, bananas are bananas, blueberries are blueberries and raisins are raisins. And, the nut butter I use I make myself with just lightly salted and unsalted almonds and ground flaxseed, as shown here.
Almond butter ingredients
But the rest of the ingredients are much more complex, meaning that they themselves are made with a lot of ingredients. Here’s what’s in the whole grain bread I used to make the power bar sandwich:
Though I’m not a big fan of the added sugar, the rest of the ingredients look fine to me – and I’m sure not going to start off making the power bar sandwich by first baking the bread needed to make that sandwich.
Then there’s the choice of honey, jam and/or cookie spread. As shown below, the honey is just honey. The jam is made with fig paste, sugar, water and lemon juice. Simple enough.
But then there’s the cookie spread, which tastes great but is also made with many more ingredients than the honey and jam, including a good shot of added sugar. (A quick side note regarding nutrition labels: the first thing to check on any nutrition label is serving size. As you can see in the above picture, the cookie spread serving size is 2 tablespoons, which is twice the serving size of the 1 tablespoon serving size for honey and jam. That means that tablespoon for tablespoon, which is about all you need to make the power bar sandwich, fig butter has 45 calories, honey has 60 calories and cookie spread has 85 calories.)
Finally, here are the ingredients needed to make the chocolate chips:
The point here is that there are actually a lot of unseen/unnoticed ingredients that go into complex ingredients, like the bread and spreads, needed to make the power bar sandwich just as there are many ingredients that go into making any recipe that calls for prepared ingredients like canned or jarred products, sauces and seasonings – or just about anything found in the center aisles of the the grocery store.
The key take away here is that it’s important to be curious about what exactly you are putting into any food you make, especially if you have dietary restrictions. Being curious then means actually looking at nutrition labels in the store and deciding what works best for you before actually buying that food. Yes, that takes a bit more time, but the payoff to you and those sharing what you make for them to eat is well worth that time.
May 7th, 2022 
