The Omnivorous Geek

Over the past few months I've been trying to take better care of myself, such as having a plan for what to eat instead of just getting breakfast and lunch wherever. (Supper is a little easier to deal with, without work getting in the way.) I figured out how to have a good pack lunch everyday--basically cheese sticks, Greek yogurt, sugar-free pudding, and some kind of protein, either lunch meat or a tuna fish snack--so now breakfast is left.

I just can't face a plate of eggs and sausage in the morning, like my dad has every day. I want some carbs to get me going, but not too many, because then my blood sugar goes haywire and I feel sick. So no donuts, breakfast cereal, pancakes, etc. Breakfast burritos from the gas station work all right, but that gets expensive and inconvenient, and they have stuff I don't want.

So this past month I started experimenting with muffins. I've taken elements from several different recipes to make this one, and it works pretty good. My plan now is to make a batch or two of these on the weekend and eat them during the week. Last weekend I didn't make any, and breakfast got chaotic again, so it's gonna take some discipline. I might make another batch today and take pictures for another post. Mainly I want to get this down on the blog so I don't forget it, since it took several different tries to get the recipe just how I like it.

This makes a very dense, hearty muffin. If you look at the ingredients you can see that there's more fiber than flour, which is good for me, but doesn't make for a very fluffy, cake-like muffin. It's not very sweet, either, but to my tooth it's just right. They're quite tasty fresh, plain or with butter, and they do last the week for my breakfasts, but toward the end of the week they don't taste as good. They also mold after a couple weeks, because all the ingredients are natural.

For my next batch, I might try adding bacon.

Edit: Piccies!

Peanut Butter Bran Muffins
Makes 11 muffins

Soak for 1 hour:
1 1/4 c. buttermilk
1 1/4 c. bran

Whisk together:
1/2 c. melted butter
1/2 c. natural peanut butter
1/4 c. honey or agave syrup
1 large egg, room temperature

Mix thoroughly in separate bowl:
1 c. white whole wheat flour
1/4 c. almond or coconut flour
1/4 c. bran
1/2 c. Sucanat
1/2 Tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt, optional

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Prepare muffin tins with one spray of cooking oil in the bottom of each cup. Whisk bran mixture into wet ingredients. Add dry ingredients and stir just until everything is moistened. This makes a very lumpy, thick dough that looks like dark brown oatmeal. Fill 11 muffin cups almost full, and add a little water to empty cup to even out baking. Bake for 18-20 minutes. (18 is perfect in my parents' convection oven.)

Notes on ingredients:
If you don't have or want to buy buttermilk, you can make it by adding a few teaspoons of lemon juice or vinegar to a measure of regular milk and letting it set for a few minutes until it curdles. That's usually what I do, or you can also buy buttermilk powder and keep it in the cupboard.

Sucanat is like brown sugar, but granular because it's made directly from evaporated cane juice instead of from adding molasses back into white sugar. I get it at my local bulk foods store. That's also where I get the bran and the natural peanut butter. The peanut butter is ground fresh in the store, so it's very soft and creamy, without the layer of oil you'd find in national brands like Smucker because it hasn't had time to separate yet. If you can get your peanut butter that way, I recommend it.

I used agave syrup because one of the original recipes I experimented with called for it, but when this bottle is gone I'm going back to honey. It's really not any better for you than honey, just digested in the liver instead of the intestines, and it has kind of a medicinal aftertaste. And again, I can get local honey from the same bulk store.

Melted butter is my oil of choice in baking. It adds a touch more sweetness, and it's better for you than highly processed oils. But you can certainly use canola or regular vegetable oil if you want. When I use the salted kind of butter, I don't add the salt in the dry ingredients.

I get King Arthur brand white whole wheat flour at a big box store like Wal-Mart or Meijer. If you don't want to use almond or coconut flour, which I add for EVEN MOAR fiber, you can just use 1 1/4 c. of regular flour instead. White whole wheat is a little lighter than regular whole wheat, with the same nutrition value.

Experimenting with recipes is fun! Early experiments didn't turn out perfectly, but they weren't failures, because as the Mythbusters say, every experiment is data. And I still ate all the muffins.

And thus I continue to turn my LJ into a recipe blog.

Anyway. I have been very busy baking cookies and such, and perhaps I will share more about that later. First, though, here is how I make granola. Because I make fan-tucking-fastic granola, if I do say so myself. It's my own recipe, modified somewhat from another family favorite, and I love it.

The recipe below makes a huge batch that my family manages to eat in less than a month. It's a very hearty, satisfying cereal--a bowl of this with almond or soy milk will keep me from getting the munchies for many hours. Good for avoiding those donuts at work.

Though it has sugar in it, it doesn't bother my hypoglycemia, probably because it also has plenty of complex carbs, protein, fiber, and fat. According to my calculations, this recipe costs us between thirteen and fourteen dollars in materials, but we do buy a lot of our food in bulk at a health food-type store. You can half or quarter the recipe for a smaller family, and the ingredients are flexible.

So, I share with you my secret learnings. There are three secrets to making great granola: a great recipe (see below), mixing all of the ingredients very well (not as easy as it might seem), and baking it evenly.

Fellowship Granola
Based on "Koinonia Granola" from More-with-Less Cookbook

( Pictures. Delicious pictures. )