#IMakeMyOwnGranola

In a strange, rather quick turn of events, my husband and I bought two new cars last week. Even stranger, we went from a lifted Toyota Tundra and a Volvo wagon (guess which one was mine!) to two, yes TWO Toyota Priuses. Or is it Prius’? Priuii?

It’s funny that slowly, but surely I’m becoming someone I never thought I’d be. I’m someone who makes her own cleaning and beauty products, grows her own produce, buys fresh, organic eggs from a friend who raises chickens, and now this: a hybrid car. Who am I?

It’s also funny that when you buy a Prius, people give you crap about it. Some good friends of ours (you know who you are!) jokingly asked if instead of new car smell, the Prius came with dirty hippy smell. I replied that you get your choice of Dirty Hippie or Patchouli. Touche. I poke fun at myself, too, though. To the photo of my new car that I posted on Facebook I added #IMakeMyOwnGranola. You know, because I do.

And that’s what I’m sharing with you today, my recipe for granola bars. “Why on earth,” you might ask, “would I need to make my own granola bars? Aren’t those ones in the store healthy enough?” The answer, sweet friends, is not really. Many of us are in the battle to cut out more processed foods from our diet. Even the popular granola bars that claim to be 100% natural contain sweeteners like high maltose corn syrup, maltodextrin, and high fructose corn syrup — 3 highly processed ingredients that do not exist in nature. Shame on you, Nature Valley!

I found this recipe in one of our favorite recipe books The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen when my dad was sick. The author, Rebecca Katz calls them “Anytime Bars” because when going through cancer treatments, you never know when hunger will strike, and you want to be ready to take advantage of those moments to nourish yourself. I find that to be true, and I’m not in cancer treatment. She also includes a list of variations at the end, so if the bars don’t sound like something you or your family would like, you can definitely switch up the nuts, the flour, the dates, to suit your own tastes. These are so easy and so worth the time. I hope that you try them!

Oh, and buy a Prius. And some patchouli. Who are you???

Anytime Bars

Ingredients:

1 cup raw pecan halves

1 cup whole raw almonds

2 Tbsp spelt flour (look for Bob’s Red Mill brand in the health food section)

2 Tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour

2 Tbsp finely ground flax seeds

1/4 tsp sea salt

1/8 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp baking soda

1/4 cup old-fashioned oats

1 cup pitted dates, quartered (preferably Medjool)

1 cup unsulfured dried apricots, cut in half

1 egg

5 Tbsp maple syrup

1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Lightly oil a 9-inch square pan.

Spread the pecans in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet and toast for 7-10 minutes, until aromatic and slightly browned. Watch them carefully, as they can burn easily. Repeat process for almonds. Turn oven down to 325.

Combine the spelt flour, all-purpose flour, flaxseeds, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in a food processor and process for 5 seconds to combine. Add the pecans and almonds and pulse 5 times to coarsely chop the nuts. Add the oats, dates, and apricots and pulse 10 to 15 times, until the mixture is well chopped but still coarse.

In a large bowl, whisk the egg, maple syrup, and vanilla together until thoroughly combined. Add the fruit and nut mixture and use your hands to mix thoroughly, being sure to separate any clumps of fruit. Spread the mixture in the oiled baking pan in an even layer and bake for 25-30 minutes, until set and golden brown. Don’t overbake, or the bars will be too dry. Let cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes, and then cut into 25 squares. Leave the bars in the pan until completely cool so they’ll hold together when you remove them.

Variations:

Use walnuts instead of pecans
Add ¼ cup dried cranberries, cherries, blueberries, raisins, or currants when mixing together at the end.
Add 1 Tbsp of grated orange zest when mixing together at the end.
Add 2 Tbsp of sesame seeds when mixing together at the end.
Add ¼ cup of unsweetened shredded coconut when mixing together at the end.
For a gluten-free version, substitute a gluten-free muffin mix for the spelt flour and all-purpose flour. While oats don’t contain gluten, they’re often processed alongside wheat, so if your sensitivity to gluten is extreme, be sure to use Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free oats.

A Big Plate of Elephant

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

My two oldest chickens are fighting the way brothers and sisters fight.

It’s exhausting.

Last week, we capped off Spring Break with a trip in our trailer, which is roughly one-twelfth the size of our house.

So here I am at the start of Holy Week, not feeling very holy. At one point, after whining “Gabe hit me” over and over, Kate asked why I was ignoring her.

It’s because I had lost the ability to form a sentence without the F-word in it.

I want to believe this is normal behavior, part of growing up, but I have some personal knowledge of brothers and sisters who grew up to not like each other much. I wish I knew the magical words to make them love each other.

“You better love your sister or I am going to make you the sorriest 9 year old in this campground!!!!”—just trust me that these are not the magical words.

So now we’re trying this:

Your job is to make your sister smile.

Not twist her up into a screaming banshee who tries to pull every hair out of your head over a fork.

Your job is to make your brother smile.

Not bribe your little sister to tell him that she doesn’t love him anymore.

Is it working?

If by working you mean I have now said it enough that if I died tomorrow they would put it on my tombstone in all caps and with twelve exclamation points? Then yes.

By any other measure, ish.

But there’s a thing we all have to remember. Building a family is like eating an elephant. It doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t even happen in a year, or a decade. It takes a lifetime, maybe generations. It means that even when we’ve had enough, we have to stay at the table and help.

I hope that right now you are cruising through some yummy, easy piece of your elephant that pairs well with red wine.

But if your piece looks more like mine right now, bony and full of gristle, I want to remind you that you aren’t alone. EVERY FAMILY hits rough patches. ALL PARENTS look over at what’s left of the elephant and wonder how they’ll ever get it done, or why they chose to eat this elephant in the first place.It happens to EVERYONE.

The key is to keep eating.

Dinner of Champions

Paula and I lived together all through our 20s. One of our apartments was a two bedroom, one bathroom on the bottom floor of a two story building built in a mid-century style. Big, wide floor to ceiling windows in the living room and light green tile in the kitchen. We called it the cave because it was always cool and dark in that place, even in the height of summer. Of course, we were two blocks from the beach, so that helped some.

About six months after we moved in, a newly divorced young mom with two small kids moved into the apartment next to us. The kids were small, probably 2 and 4 years old. Their names were Landon and Maddy. Every day when they came home, Landon would look through the window and wave. Sometimes one of us would say “Hi, Bud” and then he’d holler to us about his picture or his game or whatever.

One night, Paula was standing in the front of the window eating from a bowl when Landon came home.

“What are you eating?” he asked her.

“Cereal.”

“You’re eating cereal for dinner?????”

He went running into his house, yelling for his mom. A big pause. Then the door opened and he stuck his head out.

“MY MOM SAYS YOU CAN’T EAT CEREAL FOR DINNER!!!” he yelled. Then he slammed the door.

Catholic kids know better. We can eat cereal for dinner. It happens all the time, like Fridays in Lent. Pancakes. Waffles. Egg sandwiches. And cereal.

Just no bacon.

And waffles are a MUCH better option then that other Catholic Friday stand-by: tuna casserole.

(My mom is screaming right now “But you LOVED tuna casserole when you were a baby!!!” Fine. But then I grew some taste buds. Just sayin’).

I use the Better Homes New Cookbook recipe for waffles, minus the cooking oil and sugar:

1 3⁄4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1⁄4 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 3⁄4 cups milk

Of course, I add the same secret ingredients as my Super Secret Saturday Pancakes: vanilla and cinnamon (we eyeball it).

Gabriel shook off my waffles the other night and had cereal and yogurt instead. Of course, I made sure Paula saw this picture. She said “Cereal: the breakfast, lunch & DINNER of champions!”

Breakfast: It’s what’s for dinner.

My Favorite Heroines

With full knowledge that Jane Austen is not an American and Charles Frazier is a man…

Dana and I talked about doing something literary for Women’s History Month. We thought that choosing literature as a topic would narrow our focus.

As if. I finally decided to share my three favorite heroines, in the order that I met them.

Scarlett O’Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler

I read Gone with the Wind in 5^th grade. I had seen the movie for the first time and asked my mom to read it. She told me that I had to wait a few years. But then my class went on a field trip to the library and I went into the adult section, grabbed the book and palms sweating, checked it out.

By now I have read the book at least 15 times. It’s full of thorny cultural problems, such as slavery and the glorification of the early days of the KKK. Some people may argue that you cannot read the book without the context. Fair enough. But then we also have to see Scarlett as more than a Southern belle.

All of the female characters in the book are complex, and for most, their movie counterparts are only shadows. It’s really worth the read, all 1500 pages. Scarlett has always fascinated me: a young girl forced to grow up too early and by quickly changing rules in wartime, who then must find a way to stand and lead her people out of trouble. She was the first such female heroine I had ever encountered and I just knew that I would make the same choices in her shoes.

I feel her triumph at the picnic at Twelve Oaks, surrounded by admirers. I understand how Ashley’s rejection and Rhett’s mockery drive her to accept Charles’ proposal, because I was young and stupid once.

I admire her determination when she stays in Atlanta and delivers Melanie’s baby, then hauls everyone home to Tara–including her own son by Charles–come hell or high water. And when she shakes her fist at the heavens and swears that neither she, nor any of her kin, will ever be hungry again, I believe her. She’s a survivor.

I forgive her Frank Kennedy, because selfish Sue Ellen would’ve married him and left Tara to rot. I forgive her post-war greed and Yankee-associating because she was traumatized.

The whole Ashley-Rhett-Scarlett triangle is tiring by the end, and Bonnie’s death is a literary cruelty that I will take up with Ms. Mitchell one fine day in the hereafter, but when Rhett walks out on her, I am always outraged. Scarlett is no Steel Magnolia, a passive aggressive mess of manners and emotions. She is simple, what you see is what you get and practical as straight line from here to there. I want to scream “What else does she have to do?!!!” But of course, I know: she has to grow beyond the refugee to the wisdom of mid-life. I love that Mitchell allows us to consider that she may do exactly that.

Ada Monroe

When I first met Ada in the beginning chapters of Cold Mountain, she was not interesting. Fluttery and foolish. I was bored by her inability to adapt. I almost gave up on her when the rooster attacked her in the boxwoods. For the love of goodness.

Then came Ruby, one of the greatest supporting characters of all time. I’d not keep a flogging rooster. Ruby’s presence gives us one of the greatest chapter titles in all of literary history: Verbs, all of them tiring. She is the stone on which Ada sharpens her life.

The love story between Inman and Ada is gloriously awkward and real. By the time he gets home, Ada is a more full and more simple version of her old self and all of his illusions have been destroyed by the war. In a way they grew up together, apart. The social barriers that stood between them before the war are gone. Life in the Appalachians is beautiful but hard. Ada has to abandon her Low Country belle values. With Ruby’s help she becomes a practical, strong and courageous woman.

It is the only thing that makes Inman’s loss bearable. And the presence of Ruby and her Georgia Boy frees Ada to stand alone for the rest of her life instead of driving her towards dependence on some other man hastily married to legitimize her child and save her financially.

The friendship between Ruby and Ada is a safe, soft place, the kind of relationship between two women that should stand as an example to us all. It’s a soul sisterhood, and if we don’t have something like it, we need to look within ourselves to find the reason.

Anne Elliot

How could I choose Anne over Elinor or Elizabeth? Truthfully, Elinor is too careful and Elizabeth’s snarky relationship with Darcy is tiring. I feel a kinship to Anne, from Persuasion, maybe because we both came to love later in our lives. Or maybe because in Anne’s story, she is the one who needs the second chance.

Anne rejected a good man in her youth because of her family’s disapproval, even though she loved him. Nine years later, she is still unmarried when Captain Wentworth returns, triumphantly wealthy, to find a wife. Anne recognizes immediately upon seeing him again that she has always loved him. But instead of throwing herself at his mercy, Anne is a portrait of calm humility. She doesn’t chase him. She waits for him to battle his pride, and in the end, she is the winner.

She’s very different from Scarlett and Ada, but for me, she is the perfect culmination of Austen’s famous nouns: sense and sensibility, pride and prejudice. She didn’t start that way, but she grew in age and wisdom and learned to trust herself and her decisions. And she does it all with kindness and poise.

There is not as much meat to Austen’s heroines as there is to Scarlett or Ada, but they are good examples for us nonetheless. Our rights as women don’t always have to be defended with angry recriminations. At some point all the anger becomes noise. We can be the women we want to be with manners and beauty and faith and reserve our judgment for the moments when we really need it, which makes it that much more powerful.

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The website A Mighty Girl is a wonderful resource for history and literature that showcases women and girls doing big things in the world. They also can be found on Facebook for a daily dose of mighty girls doing mighty things in the world

We Can All have a Drop of the Irish

I’ve learned that when you are making new friends, it’s better not to show all your Pioneer Woman skills at once, because before people know about the cancer and the anxiety and the other reasons we eat like this, they may get intimidated. Or it may feel pretentious or mompetition-y and goodness knows we are not about that.

We had some new friends over for dinner Saturday night and since Shea is going to be gone tonight, I made a St. Paddy’s day dinner. It was simple and easy, and who doesn’t love that, so I’m sharing.

I got my corned beef at Trader Joe’s and was surprised at how lean it was. But corned beef can be bought at any meat counter today and for super cheap.

I boil my corned beef. I pop it all into a big pot, cover with water and dump the spice packet in. Then I add the secret ingredient: one beer.

Now, I will admit to using Coors Light in years past.

I know. But I was young and stupid.

These days I try to use something hearty and maybe even Irish. Shea had Mississippi Mud in the fridge, but he told me I couldn’t use it. So I went with a local micro-brew.

Bring the pot to a boil and then lower to a hard simmer. I go with a 2 ½ hour boil, but that can change with the size of the beef. They usually come with directions.

The last 30 minutes, I quarter a full head of cabbage and float it on top of the simmering beef.

I never boil potatoes or carrots in the pot, because I hate mushy veggies. Usually, I make garlic mashies, but this year I found a recipe in Family Circle for red roasted potatoes. It was a huge hit and instantly went into the dinner rotation.

Take good sized red potatoes (one per person)

Cut slices across the top of each potato, leaving a quarter inch base at the bottom.

Stuff fresh garlic slices into the vents (you could use crushed but that’s going to be a much stronger garlic flavor. The slices add a delicate flavor to the potato)

Drizzle with olive oil, lightly salt and pepper and roast at 375 degrees for 65 minutes.

Optional (but delicious): crisp chopped shallots in olive oil to sprinkle over the potatoes before serving.

Shea is half Irish and I am an eighth. Or sixteenth. I’m not really sure, but Kennedy is a family name so there’s Irish blood back there somewhere, which qualifies me to say:

May God give you…
For every storm, a rainbow,
For every tear, a smile,
For every care, a promise,
And a blessing in each trial.
For every problem life sends,
A faithful friend to share,
For every sigh, a sweet song,
And an answer for each prayer.

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