PB&J Oatmeal

This morning I woke up hungry for PB&J, probably because the last thing I ate last night was half of a PB&J cupcake from Hill Country (yum!!). I refrained from eating the rest of the cupcake as my breakfast (although I have to admit that I do eat cupcakes for breakfast on occasion...) and tried to figure out how to satisfy this craving in a more breakfast-y way.

Grilled PB&J? A PB&J smoothie...? Toast with peanut butter and strawberry jam?

Then I thought about oatmeal. Since coming to NYC I've found oatmeal to be a tasty, versatile  quick, and healthy breakfast. Having tried out many recipes from the internet, I was finally feeling comfortable with it enough to try making up my own recipe and I think it turned out pretty great, if I do say so myself :)

But try it yourself and you be the judge!

PB&J Oatmeal

3/4 cup old fashioned oats

1 cup milk

dash salt

2 teaspoons brown sugar

1 1/2 Tablespoons peanut butter

1 Tablespoon grape or strawberry jam/jelly

peanuts for garnish (optional)

Cook the oats with the milk and salt according to package instructions (either stovetop or microwave). I put them in a microwave-safe bowl and nuked it for about 3 1/2 minutes. Add brown sugar and peanut butter to cooked oats and stir to mix. Top with a dollop of jam (I used strawberry) and sprinkle with peanuts, if desired.

Enjoy this grown-up spin on a childhood favorite with a big glass of milk!

The peanut butter oatmeal would also be good with chocolate chips stirred in, instead of jelly :)

Baked Oatmeal In A Mug

It's back! Another installment of Mug Monday! After a very long sabbatical...

Ever since my days at summer camp, I've loved baked oatmeal. In fact, baked oatmeal is actually one of the best-loved and well-known breakfast meals at Camp Luz.

When my parents opened the Cream & Sugar Cafe while I was in high school, we found a recipe that my sister and I decided was close enough to camp's and the love of baked oatmeal spread throughout West Liberty.

Now, in New York, I still love to make baked oatmeal. However, like everything that requires an oven, it was a little inconvenient to have to carry all my supplies to the kitchen one floor up.

Then I got to thinking, I can make regular oatmeal in a mug. And I can bake muffins in a mug; I wonder if I can make my baked oatmeal in the microwave?

I did a little experimenting, cutting down the recipe, adjusting ingredients, and I found that yes, yes you can make baked oatmeal in the microwave! The best part is it's super quick! Just 2 minutes at most to mix up the ingredients and 1-2 minutes to cook it! Plus it's filling, healthy, delicious, oh, and gluten free!

Baked Oatmeal

(Gluten Free)

1 Tablespoon butter

1 1/2 Tablespoon brown sugar

1 egg white

1 Tablespoon milk

dash salt

1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup quick-cooking oats

2 teaspoons cranberries, raisins, dried cherries, chocolate chips, etc. (optional)

Melt the butter in your mug. Add the brown sugar, egg white, milk, salt, cinnamon, and baking powder. Mix together then add oats and any extras. Stir until oats are coated and liquids aren't settled at the bottom.

Microwave 1-2 minutes (my microwave takes exactly 2 minutes but it's not a very powerful microwave, I would guess that 1 minute 30 seconds would do in most microwaves). When it's done, the oatmeal will pull away from the sides.

Give it a couple minutes to cool, as this is very hot when first out of the microwave, then enjoy warm with some tea, milk, or coffee.

7 Things To Do With Ripe Bananas

Ok, I'm kindof picky when it comes to bananas. I like them a little green, or just yellow. As soon as they have a couple brown spots, or are getting darker yellow, I don't eat them. Not unless they're in something. They have a totally different taste!

It's always been a bit of a problem, especially in the summer when bananas turn super fast. And since it's difficult for one person to eat a bunch of bananas in the two days that they're actually at their tastiest (in my opinion) I've had to come up with a lot of ideas of things to do with them when they're no longer in their prime.

Lucky for me, bananas are extremely versatile and can be used a lot of different ways. I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who doesn't like their bananas too ripe so I thought I'd share what I like to do with bananas when they're past the point of me just peeling and eating it.

Things to do with bananas when they're no longer green:

- Make banana-peanut butter toast! Just toast a piece of whole wheat bread, spread it with peanut butter and top with a sliced banana. A delicious, nutritious and filling breakfast that will stick with ya til lunch.

- Make a Chunky Monkey Smoothie!
1/4 cup milk, 1 banana, 2 TBSP chocolate milk mix, 2 TBSP peanut butter, 2-3 ice cubes and blend

- Make a banana-peanut butter-granola wrap! Take a whole wheat soft-shell tortilla, spread with peanut butter, sprinkle with granola then place banana in the middle, roll up and enjoy! This could also be for an on-the-go breakfast.

Things to do with bananas when they're ripe/overly ripe:

- Make banana pancakes
a) Mash up a banana and add it to you regular pancake recipe or mix

Happy food!

b) Healthy, gluten free banana pancakes
2 eggs, 1 mashed up banana, a little cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of vanilla - mix is all together and cook like you would a regular pancake. I was afraid these would be really eggy but they weren't actually, they cooked up just like regular pancakes! I topped them with a little cream cheese and cinnamon-sugar and they were quite delicious!

- Make banana bread! Or banana muffins which are easy to share with friends as I've been doing :)

- Make Peanut Butter-Oatmeal-Banana Cookies! For breakfast!!

These are soooo yummy! I made some last week and not only could I bake them in my lil toaster oven (!) they made my whole apartment smell like this delicious peanut butter-banana scent. The original recipe calls for vanilla protein powder and butter extract but also said it was optional so I didn't use them... I also didn't have any nuts to add so I just used crunchy peanut butter. And I only made a half recipe which made about 9 cookies.

Basically my recipe looked like this:

1 ripe banana, mashed

1/4 cup + 1/8 cup chunky peanut butter

1/3 cup applesauce

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup old fashioned oats

1/8 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350* (or don't if you're using a toaster oven like me). Combine the banana and peanut butter in a medium-sized bowl. Add applesauce and vanilla. Then add oatmeal and chocolate chips. Let dough stand for 10 minutes then drop by spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet (or greased piece of aluminum foil with cleverly folded sides in my case) and flatten. Bake for 20-30 minutes (depending on your oven and  how done you want the cookies. I went about 23 minutes.) 

These cookies can be eaten right away or stored for later. If you can only work in small batches like me then the dough can be kept in the refrigerator for later also :)

Clearly I'm a big fan of the peanut butter-banana combo hehe. I've also read that bananas can be mashed up and used as a moisturizing facial mask but I kindof don't want to waste a banana on my face when I can make one of these magical foods instead... I'll let you know if I try it one day though!

How do these sound? What do you do with old bananas?

A Good English Cuppa

It's been a crazy last few weeks, first travelling home for the weekend which turned into a week then returning to New York for 5 days before heading out to Kansas for Thanksgiving and to be reunited with my college friends in what is a big visitation weekend at Hesston. My days and body are very confused on the ever changing schedules but I'm pretty sure that today is Monday which can only mean one thing: it's recipe time!

I'm not going to get all fancy this week, this isn't even going to be a recipe for food (although I do have some great dessert recipes I've discovered... stay posted!). This may be cheating since it's a drink and drinks are commonly made in mugs... but my recipe for the week is simple English tea in a mug.

Yes it's simple and maybe this version of tea is cheating on another level because it doesn't involve a kettle and stove and whistle but tea means a lot to me. You see, my granny was born in England and although she moved to America at just 6 months of age, she was very English, her mother having grown up and living in England until that point. And what is more English than tea?

Grannie passed on the tea-loving gene to my mom who also raised my sister and I on it. Our coffee maker was even turned into a hot tea maker as my dad slowly gave up on anyone else in the house liking coffee.

Growing up, I might be greeted in the morning with a hot cup of tea to 'help me wake up slowly'. Whenever I was sick or feeling down, a cup of hot tea was always the answer and would be quickly delivered by my mom or my grannie. Before school started each fall, my grannie would host a tea party for the girls in the family, my sister and I, Mom, my youngest aunt, and my younger cousins. Whenever we would stop by Grannie's house after school, have a sleepover, or after a big family meal, a nice cup of hot tea was offered. At our tea parties, Grannie would educate us on the etiquitte of tea and always have a few different choices of tea. Sugar cubes were always on hand because that was the best way to sweeten tea.

Back-to-school tea party - many years ago

My wonderful Grannie passed away almost a month ago. It's hard to believe it's been that much time already.  It's been a crazy, surreal, emotional few weeks. I don't want to dwell on all that though. The important thing is her life, I know she's in a far better place now and all we can do is remember the good times and happy memories. It is also important to keep her memory alive through the little things and, for me, one thing that will always remind me of my grannie is hot, English tea.

I don't use a kettle and stovetop. And I don't have sugar cubes on hand or beautiful china teacups. But the taste is the same and that is one of comfort and warmth and love.

Hot English Tea

Fill a mug almost full with water. Microwave 1 1/2 minutes. Place 1 teaspoon loose-leaf basic black tea (I like English Breakfast) in a tea ball, tea bag, or tea infuser of some sort (or use a pre-made, storebought tea bag, of a basic black tea such as English Breakfast. But PLEASE don't use Lipton :P ) 

Place the tea bag into the hot water and steep 3-4 minutes, depending how strong you like it. Remove the tea bag and squeeze out the bag with a spoon. Add sugar to taste (1 Tablespoon if you're a lady in my family ;) ) Add a splash of milk (about 1/2 Tablespoon) and stir. 

*Tea etiquette: Only add milk to basic, black, English tea.

Curl up with a good book, sit and look out the window, use it in the morning to "wake up slowly," or invite a friend over to join you, set out some cookies and sweet bread and enjoy your tea.

<3 Ashley

Hurricane Day

Well Hurricane Sandy aka Frankenstorm is blasting through NYC.

I have to admit, I was a little excited to witness a hurricane, especially one that was getting this much hype! I've always lived inland and hurricanes were never an issue, although the tornadoes I was in Kansas for were pretty exciting. So my first hurricane being a "hybrid" storm-- hurricane mixing with a winter storm front from the west and coming in at high tide on a full moon-- seemed like a pretty big deal!

I worked at Hill Country yesterday. I was the opening host and we ended up closing early (at 5) so I did all the closing work too. There was so much electricity in the air as we all rushed to get the place closed and get everyone home before the subways shut down at 7. 

Today the storm rolled in. I awoke to the sound of rain and wind, the wind getting worse as the day went on. I've been fortunate enough not to lose power or to have any flooding (something I was warned my ground-level apartment was prone to doing). With the subways being shut down, most of New York is too. Even the New York Stock Exchange closed for today and tomorrow, the first unplanned closing since 9/11.

Since I didn't have any hindrances, today was just a nice day off from work! (Well the buttons on my Cablevision box did stop working and since my remote has never really worked my tv is now stuck on Starz, which so far hasn't been too bad.) And hopefully tomorrow will be another nice break (praying that the electricity stays on all day!)

It was so nice to sleep in this morning and have a day where I had to stay home and mostly just relax! I like to wake up slow in the mornings. And make myself something delicious for breakfast of course :) In my quest for more mug recipes I found this recipe for French Toast in a Mug and thought it would be a perfect Hurricane Day breakfast (ok, brunch if we're talking time of day).

I made it for the first time a couple days ago and was impressed! Last time (when these pics were taken), I was fancy and used bread from a mini baguette I had gotten at the grocery but today I used regular bread slices and it was just as delicious!

Mug French Toast

1/2 Tablespoon butter

2 slices bread

1 egg

3 Tablespoons milk

1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

Few drops vanilla

Melt the butter in a large mug and tilt the mug so that the butter coats the sides. Rip or cut the bread into cubes and drop them into the mug, filling it up. In a bowl, beat the egg, milk, cinnamon, and vanilla together. Pour the liquid mixture over the bread, coating all of the topmost pieces.

Microwave for 1-2 minutes or until the egg is set (most of the egginess will settle in the bottom so pull the bread away from the sides to check that the eggs are no longer liquid-y in the bottom of the mug.) Top with syrup and enjoy!

I'd be interested in adding syrup to the egg mixture to get a maple flavor "baked" into the toast... Also in mixing peanut butter with the syrup as I love peanut butter on my French toast!

A Little Breakfast Something

Hello again!

It's been a busy weekend (aren't they always?!)-- working and hanging out with friends and cleaning up my apartment in the tiny bits of time I'm actually in it!

I'm trying to take some of the uncertainty out of my mornings by planning my outfits at the beginning of the week, packing my lunches the night before (and making foods that I can take as leftovers a few days in row), and having nutritious and delicious breakfast foods on hand. So far I'm not doing very well in those areas haha. I did make mini baked oatmeals last night so I'm set for some delicious breakfast this week :)

I get home from my internship somewhere between 9:30 and 10 pm and by that point I'm usually ready to settle in and waste time on the internet. Or, if I do have motivation, (like tonight) I get on Pinterest to look up something that I'm going to make/do then half an hour later realize that was a mistake.

I do still have some motivation though so I'm here to post a Mug Monday recipe then I'll be planning some lunchtime meals because, as my boss pointed out to me today, EasyMac is not very good for you. (I think he was a little disappointed that I had EasyMac for lunch after he saw me eating homemade baked oatmeal for breakfast!)

Speaking of breakfast, this was the very first mug recipe that I made. I found it on Pinterest and was intrigued. Then I tried it and was hooked! The original recipe is from the blog Chocolate Covered Katie, where I have also found some great recipes for oatmeal-- but that's a story for another post.

This coffee cake recipe is delicious! And super easy and fast, what could be better?! It takes about 5 minutes total but can also be prepared ahead of time and be nuked in the morning, or whenever you're ready for it! (I found this recipe while still living at home and after I tried it I mixed up 3 for my family one night. I left the mugs on the counter for them to pop in the microwave in the morning before school and work, that way I was treating them to breakfast and I didn't have to wake up at 6am)

Coffee Cake in a Mug

3 Tablespoons flour                                                               Topping:

1/4 teaspoon baking powder                                              1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

2 shakes salt                                                                                1 1/4 teaspoon brown sugar

1 Tablespoon sugar                                                                  2 pecan halves, chopped (optional)

1 Tablespoon + 2  teaspoons water                                  *I keep a ziploc bag with a

2 teaspoons oil                                                                           cinnamon/brown sugar mixture 

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract                                                 so I have it ready whenever

Combine the dry ingredients in a small bowl. Add wet ingredients. Scoop 1/2 the batter into a greased, regular sized mug. Sprinkle half of the topping onto the batter. Add the remaining batter and top with the rest of the cinnamon and sugar. Microwave for 1 minute or so and enjoy! With coffee or tea or milk :)

Part of a healthy, balanced breakfast ;)