(This will be sort of a quick read, and I’ll be back at noon today with one more post!)

When I posted about my whipped-cream-is-healthier-than-butter-and-syrup revelation recently, I got some questions about how to whip cream.

It’s actually really easy and doesn’t require a lot of sugar. Plus, it’s cheaper than whipped cream in a spray can, more real than Cool Whip, and less trash-producing than either of those.

My method is nothing fantastic…it’s just the basic whipped cream recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.

(incidentally, I highly recommend having one of those in your kitchen.  It’s not full of fancy food, but it’s really, really great to have around for solid, basic recipes.)

So.  To make enough to top two recipe’s worth of pancakes, you need 1 cup of heavy whipping cream (light cream or half and half will NOT whip), 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, and 2 tablespoons of sugar.

Why yes, my cream is from Aldi.

I know some of you will wonder about the vanilla…I didn’t actually make that myself.   My sister-in-law, (you would know her as Adriana’s mom), made a bunch of jars and gave them to family members at Christmastime.  I’m definitely going to give it a try myself, though, because the vanilla is really good.

Just dump all those ingredients together in a mixer bowl and fit your mixer with a wire whisk attachment.  If you have time, you can stick your bowl and whisk in the freezer for 10 minutes or so, as cool temperatures help cream to whip better.

Mix on low speed for a minute or so, just to combine the ingredients, then mix on high until the cream is fluffy, like so.

If you don’t beat it enough, it’ll be a little soft. It should have a pleasant firmness in your mouth.

If you beat it too long, though, it’ll start to separate a bit. And if you beat it WAY too long, it’ll turn into butter (That takes a really long time. Trust me.)

I promise it’s not rocket science, though…just keep an eye on the cream as it whips. It should only take a couple of minutes.  And really, the degree of firmness is up to you, especially if you’re just putting dollops on top of waffles or pancakes!

Do you need something to top with whipped cream?  Here are a few recipes for you.

Whole Wheat Buttermilk Pancakes

Buttermilk Waffles

Buttermilk Pancakes

When I’ve got fresh fruit, I like to pair that with the whipped cream, but I’ve also used frozen fruit successfully (the peaches up there on the whole wheat pancakes are local peaches that I sliced and froze this summer).  The key is not to thaw it to death…you want it to still be a little bit on the firm side.

Go make some breakfast food and whip up some cream for a change of pace from the usual syrup!  It’ll be delightful, I promise.

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Today’s 365 post: A page of awesome

Joshua’s 365 post: Movie Time!

This is such an easy recipe, it almost doesn’t even count as a recipe. But, since you all asked, I’m here to oblige.

I recently tried a Cook’s Illustrated beef brisket recipe that turned out some outstanding barbeque…it involved a spice rub and a pound of bacon (you top the brisket with strips of bacon).

Nothing that calls for a pound of bacon is ever bad, in my opinion.

However, you might not want to eat that type of barbeque on a consistent basis.  And bacon isn’t exactly cheap.

So, when you’re feeling slightly less indulgent, this version is a good option. Because the roast cooks in the crockpot for 8-10 hours, this barbeque requires very little hands-on time, but it does require you to plan ahead. My mom likes to cook hers overnight, but I soured on that practice during my pregnancies (to a nauseated pregnant woman, the aroma of beef roast at 2 am is, well, less than pleasant).

If you don’t want to cook your beef overnight, you could always start it really early in the morning, or you could cook it the day before so that it’s ready for the next night’s dinner.

I use chuck roast for my barbeque because I think it’s pretty much the best beef roast out there, and it’s not terribly expensive.  Happily, the quarter of the local cow I bought included a lot of chuck roasts.  Yay!

Cut your chuck roast up into pieces, about like this.

Come to think of it, I wonder if it really is necessary to cut it up.  My roasts come with a bone in them and won’t fit into the crockpot otherwise, but I imagine that if space was no issue, you could just put the whole roast into the crockpot.

Hmm.

Put the beef into your crockpot and top with some barbeque sauce.

Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours, or until the beef is fall-apart tender.

The nice thing about a chuck roast is that it’s sort of impossible to overcook it.  It’s better when it’s cooked for a really long time, actually.  If you check your beef and it looks done, but it’s not tender, cook it longer.

Once the beef is done, remove it from the crockpot, let it cool, remove any extraneous fat/gristle, and shred the meat (it should practically shred itself if you’ve cooked your roast long enough).

At this point, you can add in your favorite barbeque sauce and call it done.

Or, you can make the sauce from my grandmother’s recipe, add it to the beef, and let it cook in the crockpot for another hour or two.

Serve on buns, of course.

Any leftovers freeze very nicely for a future quick meal.

Crock Pot BBQ Beef Sandwiches

3-4 pound boneless chuck roast

1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup water
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon. chili powder
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon dry mustard
2 tablespoons sugar

Cut roast into large chunks; place in slow cooker. Cook on low for 8-10 hours. Remove beef from pot and let cool. Remove gristle/fat, and shred beef.

Add your favorite barbeque sauce to taste and heat, or combine above sauce ingredients, add to beef, and return beef to crockpot to cook on low for 2 more hours.

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Today’s 365 post: A different angle (I completely broke the one-picture-a-day pattern with this post.)

Joshua’s 365 post: A Reptile Show with a Surprise

Every now and then, I share a baking recipe with you on Wednesdays. And lots of pictures of said baking recipe. I don’t call this Wednesday Baking because I bake solely on Wednesdays…no, my oven gets a workout much more frequently than once a week! All the past baking posts are archived in the Wednesday Baking category.

This is bread, and it’s made with cornmeal, but it’s not cornbread.

No, this is a yeasted bread, and it’s quite different from the baking-powder-leavened variety. I think it’s a nice change of pace when you’re serving a meal that seems to call for cornbread (like maybe Tortilla Soup).

The dough is fairly sweet and it contains milk and two eggs, so the texture is soft, sort of like a sweet bread dough is.  Except this isn’t officially a sweet bread, so you can totally eat it at dinnertime. 

Like most of my favorite bread recipes, this one starts with flour and yeast in the mixer bowl.

Next, combine the milk, salt, sugar, and butter in a measuring cup and heat to 120° F.  I do this in the microwave, but you can also dump it all into a pot and heat it over medium-low heat on the stove.

Hi!  My name is Kristen and I take lop-sided pictures.  Also, I am too lazy to fix them sometimes.

Ok.  Mix the heated milk mixture into the flour mixture, add 2 eggs, and beat for 3 minutes.  This will produce a pretty soupy batter.

Beat in 1 cup of cornmeal.  You can use white cornmeal, but I like to use yellow for the color (I usually buy the Indian Head, which is stoneground whole grain cornmeal.)

Add in enough additional flour to make a soft dough. I never measure my flour at this step, instead relying on what looks right.  Turn the soft dough out onto a floured surface and knead for 3-5 minutes.

That will take the dough from this:      

(psst! See the bench knife over there? I think you need one.)

to this:

Place the dough back into the mixing bowl (I don’t even bother to clean mine), cover with a wet tea towel, and let it rise in a warm place for an hour.  If your house is cold, turn your oven on for 1 minute, turn it off, and then place the dough bowl inside.

Once the dough has risen, punch it down, turn it out onto a floured counter, and cut it in half.  Roll each half out into a rectangular shape, roll it up, starting from the short side, and place each loaf into a bread pan.

You can use 4×8 or 9×5 inch loaf pans for this recipe…the ones in the 4×6 pans will just be kind of tall.  I can never decide which I prefer!

Cover the loaves and let them rise 30-45 minutes, or until they look doubled in size.

Bake in a preheated 350° F oven for 25-30 minutes, or until they look browned and the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped.

Place the loaves on wire racks to cool.

Here you can kind of see the difference between the 4×8 inch loaf (on the left) and the 9×5 inch loaf.

Once it’s cool, slice with a serrated bread knife.  And spread with butter.

Cornmeal Loaves-makes 2
Printable Cornmeal Loaves Recipe

6-6 1/2 cups flour, divided
2 pkg. (2 1/4 teaspoons each) active dry yeast
2 1/4 cups milk
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter
1 tablespoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup yellow cornmeal

In a large mixer bowl, combine the yeast and 3 cups of the flour. Combine milk, sugar, butter, and salt, and heat to 120° F. Add to dry mixture in bowl; add eggs. Beat at low speed to combine, then beat at medium speed for 3 minutes. Stir in cornmeal and enough of the remaining flour to make a soft dough.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead for 3-5 minutes, or until smooth and elastic. Place dough into a bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour.

Punch dough down; divide in half. Roll each half into a rectangular shape and roll up, starting with the short end. Pinch seams to seal and place each loaf into a 4×8 or 9×5 inch loaf pan. Cover and let rise 30-45 minutes, or until doubled.

Preheat oven to 350° F. Bake loaves for 25-30 minutes, or until browned. Cool on wire racks.

source: Better Homes and Gardens 1973 Bread Cookbook

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Today’s 365 post: “You made more applesauce??”

I cut up apples and put them in a pot with a few cups of water.

I added cinnamon sticks.

I cooked the apples until they were soft.

And then I ran them through my mom’s most fabulous food mill.

This pushes the cooked apple out, leaving only the peels.  So, so, so much easier than peeling all the apples before cooking them.  And this food mill requires no electricity…just arm power.

I know I saw one like this in a catalog a while back, but I can’t remember the name of the catalog.  It was a thick one that sold all sorts of self-reliant, old fashioned kind of products.  Anyone?

I checked to see what Cook’s Illustrated had to say, and they recommend this Cuisipro Deluxe Food Mill. So, if you don’t happen to have a mom who owns a food mill, you’re not without hope.

Since my apples were sweet, I didn’t add any sugar to my sauce.  It’s 100% apples.

I put some of my applesauce in jars.

But since I canned so many tomatoes this summer, I didn’t have enough jars to hold all my applesauce.  That wasn’t a big deal, though, because I was planning to just freeze my sauce anyway, so I used some regular glass and plastic containers for the rest of the sauce.

Here’s my haul from a half bushel of apples, plus some that I picked up from the neighbor’s apple tree (no one is living there right now, so they’re free for the taking.)

Since I had to buy most of the apples, I’m not positive that my applesauce has saved me money (whereas my canned tomatoes, made with free tomatoes, was definitely frugal).

I think I paid $22 for the apples, and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t cost me $22 to buy this much applesauce at the store.

But, I actually don’t make applesauce to save money. I make it because I grew up eating homemade applesauce, and to me, the stuff from the store seems tasteless, runny, and way, way too sweet.  I’d prefer to eat no applesauce at all than to eat that, actually.

I am an applesauce snob.

Don’t hate me.

Plus, as you all know, I’m trying to buy and eat more local food, and since the apples are from PA and from my neighbor’s yard, I consider them to be quite local.

Also, this applesauce is of higher quality than the store-bought stuff.  Mine contains nothing but apples…it’s not watered down and it has no corn syrup.

And the only trash produced by this applesauce comes in the form of two paper bags, which can be recycled or composted.  The containers are all reusable, and even the lids for my jars are reused (since I’m freezing the applesauce, I used lids that were previously used to seal jars, just like I do when I make yogurt.)

So, for all those reasons, I don’t even care if this applesauce isn’t frugal.  For me, it’s a worthy investment of time and money.

Have you ever eaten or made homemade applesauce?  Tell me I’m not the only snob out there!

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Today’s 365 post: When Zoe folds laundry.

Joshua’s 365 post: A Recorder, Tank, Box, and Tarantula (not a real one!)

When I shared my dinner photo with you the other day as evidence that I had indeed resisted takeout temptation, a lot of you asked for the recipe, and I’m here to oblige.

This recipe comes compliments of my aunt, and she got it from someone at church, and that means I haven’t the faintest idea why it’s called Shrimp Veiness.  Googling it only turns up results from my own menu plans, so that’s no help.

EDIT: My aunt just emailed me to let me know I’ve had the name written on my recipe card wrong all these years.  I’m so embarrassed.  Hee.  The correct name is Shrimp Viennese, which does indeed make waaaay more sense.

Basically, though, it’s a rice casserole with a delicious shrimp and mushroom cream sauce.

(I just want to say that creamy sauces are pretty much the best thing in the whole world.)

I don’t have step-by-step pictures, but I’m sure that if you can read, you can manage with the photos that I do have.

Ok.  So, to make this, you need shrimp.  That automatically puts this into not-so-frugal territory, but as shrimp dishes go, this one does stretch ‘em more than usual.  So, you could think of it as frugal if you’re comparing shrimp recipes to shrimp recipes.

Just don’t compare it to a lentil soup recipe.

Anyway.

For the tastiest shrimp experience, do yourself a favor and buy raw shrimp.  Pre-cooked, pre-peeled shrimp are handy, to be sure, but they just do not taste as delicious.

The recipe calls for a pound of cooked, peeled shrimp, but I just steam a pound of raw, unpeeled shrimp and call it good.

To help the shrimp distribute through the dish well, slice them in half lengthwise.  They should still have their shrimpy shape…they’ll just be thinner.  You could just chop them in half, but that wouldn’t look as beautiful.

You’ll also need cooked rice.  The recipe calls for 3 cups, but since I like my rice to be sauce-erific,I only use 2 cups of rice. More sauce, less rice, I say!

You can use white or brown rice, but I usually use brown.  Because when I’m making a recipe that calls for cream and a stick of butter, health is clearly my top priority.

Speaking of butter and cream…

That’s the sauce.  Making it is pretty simple…it’s a lot like making a cream soup base (like we do for Baked Potato Soup.)  You saute chopped onions in butter, stir in flour, stir in the liquids, bring it to a boil while stirring, and boil it for a minute to thicken it up.

After the sauce is done, stir in the cooked shrimp.

Pour the sauce over top of the rice.

Cover with foil and bake at 350° F for 15-20 minutes, or until heated through.  Be careful not to overbake it because that will dry your shrimp out.  You’re not trying to cook anything; you’re just bringing it all to a even temperature.

Dish up onto your $0.50 white Goodwill plate and admire how beautiful it looks.

How many this serves sort of depends on how hungry your diners are, but I’d say that you could easily feed 4 adults with this recipe (it serves the six of us just fine, but my children definitely don’t have adult-like appetites at this point in their lives!)

This dish is definitely best the day it’s made because the chilled sauce doesn’t reheat all that well and because it soaks into the rice, making the dish not as creamy.  So, don’t make an enormous pan of this unless you’re feeding a lot of hungry people.

Shrimp Viennese

Printable Shrimp Viennese

2 tablespoons onion
6 mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup cream
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon white cooking wine
1 teaspoon dill

1 pound shrimp, cooked, peeled, and sliced in half lengthwise
2-3 cups cooked rice

In a saucepan over medium heat, saute onions and mushrooms in butter until onion is softened. Whisk in flour. Whisk in chicken broth, cream, lemon juice, wine, and dill. Cook and stir over medium heat until sauce boils. Boil and stir for 1 minute to thicken sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste (I usually add none, but if your butter and broth are unsalted, you may need to add salt).

Stir shrimp into sauce. Place rice into an 8×8 inch baking dish and pour the sauce evenly over top. Cover pan with foil and bake at 350° F for 15-20 minutes, or until heated through.

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Today’s 365 post: Do you notice clouds?

Joshua’s 365 post: Pizza Smile!

Though I often tout chocolate pudding as a great way to use up slightly sour milk, and though I’ve posted at length about making homemade pudding pops, I have somehow neglected to post the actual pudding recipe here.

We’re going to rectify that today.

Homemade chocolate pudding requires only a short list of ingredients, all of which are pantry staples at my house…cocoa powder, sugar, salt, vanilla, cornstarch, and milk.

And thanks to my detailed calculations last summer, we know that it’s cheaper even than the $0.50 boxes of pudding mix at Aldi.

Ok!  Let’s get started.  First, measure the cocoa powder into a medium saucepan and whisk in just enough water to make a smooth paste.

Stir in the sugar and a pinch of salt.

Stir in all but 1/2 cup of the milk.

Heat the milk mixture over medium heat, stirring regularly.  If you are lucky, you can slough this task off onto some small people at your house.

While the milk is heating, mix the cornstarch with the remaining milk and set aside.

When the cocoa/milk mixture reaches a full boil, stir in the cornstarch/milk mixture, stirring constantly.

Bring the pudding back to a boil, stirring constantly, and boil for 1 minute.  The pudding should be noticeably thicker at this point.

Off the heat, stir in the vanilla extract.  Vanilla has more flavor if it’s not cooked, so that’s why we’re adding it now instead of earlier.

Pour the pudding into a bowl or into individual serving cups.   Of course, you can always dish it into individual bowls later on, but it looks neater if you do it while the pudding is warm.

Chill until completely cool.  Serve plain or topped with whipped cream and a cherry.

Or, you can use your pudding to make homemade pudding pops, which, as we discovered last year, are 50% less expensive than even Aldi’s pudding pops.

I almost always double this recipe, since 2 cups of pudding doesn’t go too far around here.

Homemade Chocolate Pudding

Printable Chocolate Pudding Recipe

2 1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 cup sugar
pinch salt
2 cups milk, divided
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon vanilla

Measure cocoa powder into a saucepan. Whisk in enough water to make a smooth paste. Stir in sugar and salt. Add 1 1/2 cups milk, reserving 1/2 cup.

Heat cocoa/milk mixture over medium heat, stirring regularly, to boiling. Meanwhile, mix cornstarch and milk together.

When cocoa/milk mixture reaches a boil, whisk in cornstarch mixture, stirring constantly. Bring back to a boil and cook and stir for 1 minute.

Remove pudding from heat; stir in vanilla. Pour pudding into individual dishes or a large bowl. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.

Makes 2 cups.

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Today’s 365 post:B  is for Betsy

Joshua’s 365 post: Colors

My mom gave me some more tomatoes, so I had another little canning session.

It was a lot less nerve-wracking this time since I knew what I was doing.

Anyway, I now have seven more quarts of local, organic tomatoes, which makes me happy.

While I was in kitchen mode, I did some other cooking too.  I made some chocolate pudding, and it was really, really good.  I used some cocoa powder from Tropical Traditions and I also used some local milk, and I’m not sure which made the difference, but it was fabulous.

Somehow I have not posted the recipe I use for chocolate pudding.  I will try to rectify that.

I also made a batch of whole wheat bread.

And a batch of yogurt.

To finish things up, Lisey helped me make a double batch of energy balls.

You know what is one of my favorite things about homemade food?  I love how much packaging waste it prevents.

My tomato jars can be completely reused except for the lids.

My pudding ingredients all come in recyclable/compostable containers and the finished pudding is in reusable glass containers.

My whole wheat bread is stored in reused plastic bags.

My yogurt packaging produces no waste at all (even the lids can be reused since I’m not actually sealing my yogurt jars).

My energy balls are just fine in my lasts-forever Pyrex container.

Plus, everything I made is delicious and inexpensive, and a number of my ingredients were organic/local.

Sometimes, trying to minimize the food packaging we bring into our house seems like an impossible and/or expensive task, so I’m always thrilled when I manage to do that AND be frugal.  Yay!

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Today’s 365 post: A little storm blew through

Joshua’s 365 post: Archeopteryx

I brought home several baskets of tomatoes from my parents’ garden yesterday.

And a big ol’ pressure canner.

So, my goal for today is to get all the tomatoes packed safely into jars.  I haven’t canned tomatoes since 1998, I think, but I am armed with an instruction manual so I think I’ll be ok.

I’m not one to adore the canning process, but I am excited at the prospect of having a nice little stash of local, organic tomatoes in reusable glass jars.

And they’ll be totally free except for the cost of some canning lids and a little electricity (but since I’m using a pressure canner, the jars don’t even have to cook for very long).

So, breakfast, then a quick trip out to buy lids, and I’ll be in business.  Wish me luck!

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Today’s 365 post: $150.99?

Joshua’s 365 post: Sonia’s Money

When I posted the pizza bagel picture on my 365 blog, a couple of you were wondering where you could find the recipe.

Normally if you’re trying to find a recipe I’ve posted, you can use the search box over there on the right, or poke through the recipes category (I even have a pizza category).  But you couldn’t find this recipe using those methods because I hadn’t posted it!

At least, not until now.

Pizza bagels are super simple to make, and they’re great for when you don’t feel like messing with making your own dough or don’t feel like heating up your oven to eleventy-billion° F.

The method is really similar to the one that I use when I make French Bread Pizza, but I thought maybe it deserved its own post.

I usually buy cheap bagels for this…the Lender’s brand from the frozen section work great.  You could make your own bagels, I suppose, but that would sort of make this recipe not quick and easy.

Heat your oven to 350° F, and place the bagel halves, cut side up, onto a baking sheet (I use the Vollrath Cookie Sheets that Cook’s Illustrated recommends.  Love, love, love!).

Spread a thin layer of tomato sauce over the bagels.

Top with mozzarella cheese.

We like to sprinkle pizza spice onto ours at this point.  You can buy prepared pizza spice in a jar, but I usually make my own by combining oregano, basil, parsley, garlic, and some Parmesan cheese.  Use whatever you love!

You can top the cheese with pretty much anything you’d put on a regular pizza…things like pepperoni, sausage, veggies, ham and pineapple, and bacon.

Bake the bagels for about 8-10 minutes, then turn on the broiler, and broil for 2-3 minutes or until the cheese has browned a bit.

Totally delicious, totally easy.

This is kind of a non-recipe, but here are some directions that you can copy, paste, and print if you so desire.

Pizza Bagels

bagels
tomato sauce
shredded mozzarella cheese
desired toppings

Heat oven to 350 F. Place bagels on an ungreased baking sheet, cut side up. Spread a thin layer of tomato sauce over bagels, then top with cheese and desired toppings.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until heated through. Broil for 2-3 minutes, or until cheese is spotty brown.

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Do you have any great pizza alternatives for the dog days of summer? Share in the comments!

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Today’s 365 post: I was pretty proud of these biscuits.

Joshua’s 365 post: Captain Cook

disclosure

I saw this recipe on Money Saving Mom‘s menu plan last week, and decided to give it a try.  As I said yesterday, I’m sort of a slacker when it comes to making homemade desserts (especially in the summer when I don’t much feel like turning on the oven), but this looked so easy, I thought even I could get motivated to make it.

The first batch I made was just ok…it had sort of a weird flavor, and after a bite or two, I realized that the problem was a super-strong vanilla taste.  The recipe called for two teaspoons and that much vanilla in an unbaked product produces a really unpleasant vanilla overload.

So, for the next batch I made, I reduced the vanilla to 1/2 teaspoon, and the results were waaay better (and cheaper, too!  Vanilla’s kind of expensive).

This recipe is fairly customizable…you can use any type of nut butter you like, and you can vary a number of the other ingredients too. And since these are so simple to make and don’t require any heat, they’re a great project to do with kids.

First, mix the nut butter, honey, and vanilla together.

As I’m sure you know, measuring nut butter is kind of a pain since it sticks to everything.  To make this simpler and less messy, I put 1/2 cup of water into a measuring cup, add peanut butter until the water level reaches 1 cup, drain the water, and dump the peanut butter into my bowl.

This process looks exceedingly unappetizing, but it’s very not messy.

Ok.

Moving on.

(I thought about not putting the picture in there but then I thought that you might forget the measuring trick if you didn’t actually see it.)

So! Add the coconut, chocolate chips, and oatmeal to the peanut butter mixture.  If you have mini chocolate chips, I’d use those because they distribute better.  Regular chips work fine too, though.

Stir until it’s all nicely combined.

Place the bowl in the refrigerator for a half hour to make the dough easier to handle.

Take a tablespoon of dough, compress it into a ball shape, and roll it between your hands until it’s smooth.

If your balls are still pretty sticky, or if you just want to make them look fancier, you can roll them in coconut or wheat germ.

And that’s it!  You just eat these unbaked…it’s sort of like eating peanut butter/oatmeal cookie dough, except without the worry of raw eggs.  My kids love them, and as far as desserts go, I feel pretty happy about them eating these.  They may not be health food, but they’re definitely more nutritious than a lollipop.

I store ours in the fridge, but I don’t know if that would be completely necessary in the winter or in a colder air-conditioned house.

No-Bake Energy Balls
printable version

1/2 cup nut butter(almond butter, peanut butter, sunflower seed butter or any other nut or seed butter)
1/3 cup honey (I use a scant 1/3 cup)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt if using unsalted nut butter
1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1 cup shredded unsweetened coconut (or wheat germ)
1-2 tsp your favorite spices or spice combinations(optional-I haven’t done this)
1/2 C other add-ins(whole or roughly chopped nuts or seeds, dried fruit, chocolate chips, etc.)

In a medium bowl, stir together nut butter, honey, vanilla, and salt (if using).  Stir in oats, coconut, and add-ins.

Refrigerate mixture for 30 minutes. To make the balls, scoop out about a tablespoon of dough, press to compact, then roll into a ball.  Repeat with remaining dough.

Store in the fridge.

(recipe originally from FoodDoodles)

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Today’s 365 post: Mr. FG laughed at me

Joshua’s 365 post: Joshua is at his friend Thomas’ house, but I think he’s going to update his blog from there.