When I first emailed Food Junta about being a contributor, I suggested a granola bar recipe, as I was training for my first half marathon and was all about healthy, quick ways to fuel up. Life got in the way and it has been some time since that initial exchange. As luck would have it, however, I just committed to my second half marathon so it seems like the perfect time to pick up this recipe again.

Granola bars, while being good for running, are also the perfect summer breakfast. They are durable, portable, and won’t spill or get messy when you’re carrying them to work in 90-degree Washington, DC humidity (or however hot it gets where you live…).

When I first saw this post at Smitten Kitchen, and it called for 3 cups (?!) of nut mix, I knew it was for me. While these aren’t exactly diet granola bars (a half cup of butter and plenty of sweetener) the ratios are totally customizable to your personal taste.

Bon appett and happy trails!

Granola Bars

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients

3 cups quick oats

1/2 to 3/4 brown sugar

1/3 cup whole wheat flour (or gluten-free baking mix, if gluten-free)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 to 3 cups dried fruit and nuts (get creative here, people!)

1/3 cup peanut or almond butter

6 tablespoons melted butter

1/4 cup honey or maple syrup

1 tablespoon water

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease an 8” x 8” x 8” baking pan and set aside.

2. Stir together all the dry ingredients, including fruit and nuts. In a separate bowl, whisk together the melted butter, sweetener and water. Toss the wet ingredients with the dry and add the nut butter until the mixture is evenly crumbly. Spread in the pan, pressing in firmly to ensure the mixture is molded to the shape of the pan.

3. Bake the bars for 30 to 40 minutes. Don’t try to eat them right out of the oven, they get crumbly and seem underbaked and you might panic. Stick in the refrigerator for 20 minutes for them to cool completely. Once cool, cut into as many squares as you would like.

4. Store individually wrapped in an airtight container.

I get a lot of feedback about Food Junta asking for more breakfast recipes. “More breakfast recipes!” they demand. “But, Kevin has an entire series called ‘Breakfast Briefs,’” I protest. “More breakfast recipes!” they demand again.

Apparently, most of us really don’t know what to do with ourselves at breakfast. My main problem, I find, is that I’m not very hungry at breakfast itself, but I still need to eat enough (or something hearty enough) that my stomach won’t start rumbling in the middle of my Freud/Marx/Nietzsche lecture. Other problems: portability, quickness, variety. The first, portability, is not going to be solved in today’s post. (See this muffin for that.) This breakfast quinoa addresses the other two quite nicely, though.

It’s time, I think, to think of breakfast a new way. Anything you eat, you can eat for breakfast, after all. (See Mark Bittman waxing poetic about his celery-oatmeal breakfast.) I wouldn’t go so far as sesame oil in my oatmeal, but I did want to shake up the old routine. Oatmeal just gets so…mushy.

I’ve been cooking a lot of quinoa lately, and I thought it might make a good stand-in. This is still certainly on the conservative side of breakfast: I made it sweet (not savory) and cooked it with milk (soy milk, in my case) to make it a little creamier. I did throw in some TJ’s sweet and spicy pecans, which I enthusiastically recommend — they added just the right little zing. But normal nuts would be fine, too (or a pinch of cayenne?). This takes a little longer to cook the first go-round than oatmeal, but the pleasantest surprise here was that it will keep in the fridge and you can re-warm it the next day, and the next even. Just add a little more milk, and microwave for 1-2 minutes. And ta-da, breakfast again. So quick and so different! So fresh and so clean, clean.

Breakfast Quinoa

Makes enough for 3 breakfast servings, I’d say

Ingredients

- 1 cup quinoa, rinsed (you want to rinse it to get rid of the slightly bitter taste)

- 1 cup water

- 1 cup milk or soy milk

- small handful dried fruit (raisins, cranberries, chopped apricot, etc)

- small handful toasted nuts (pecans, walnuts, almonds, etc)

- cinnamon, to taste

- optional: honey, to drizzle over

- optional: cayenne, to taste

1. Combine quinoa with milk and water in a medium-sized pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer; cover and simmer for about 15 minutes (or until most of the liquid is absorbed). Take off heat and let stand, covered, for 5 minutes.

2. Stir in your goodies and spices.

3. Drizzle honey (or other sweetener) over individual servings.

To reheat: Spoon one serving into a bowl. Add a little bit of milk (just enough to get everything a little moist again). Microwave for 1-2 minutes.

Citius, altius, fortius, eh?

Good morning sports fans, and merry belated Winter Olympics. Weren’t they great, these past few weeks? Rushing home after work to catch some sweet biathlon footage only to find… really? More ice dancing? Okay, seriously, how many rounds of this are there? But in spite of tape delays, ice dancers and Apolo Ono’s soul patch, there was as always a lot to love about the Winter Olympics. I know that the image of a crowded late-night sports bar with half a dozen massive flat screens turned to a curling match is one I will cherish for years to come.

The host of these past games, Canada, is a surprisingly large country located somewhere north of Seattle, and as the photo above clearly shows, its chief exports include hockey players, beer, and maple syrup. Okay, so there’s no maple syrup in the photo (and honestly one of those silver bullets looks suspiciously like a Coors Lite), but I have it on good authority that the amber stuff is a treasured national resource. Brown gold. Canada-C. You know, like Texas Tea? Oh forget it. Tonight, as a tribute to our hockey overlords north of the border, and as part of Food Junta’s ongoing wall-to-wall Olympics coverage, I present to you: bourbon maple syrup. Swifter, higher, stronger! Sweeter, tipsier, earlier!

Times have changed since Nick Charles woke up and asked for “a drop of something to cut the phlegm” in Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, and nowadays whiskey in the morning may not seem like the breakfast of champions, but bourbon and maple syrup are a natural combination of flavors. I had never mixed the two over breakfast before, but the pairing is by no means original: big-name distillers Evan Williams and Jim Beam have their own brands of pancake syrup, while on the bartending side maple syrup has become a popular ingredient at whiskey joints. And in Michigan one chef’s brand of maple syrup, aged in bourbon casks, has earned the closest thing America has to a royal warrant: “it’s one of Oprah’s favorites.”

Yet despite the great taste, the marketing, and all the Oprah-atic fervor, finding a recipe to make bourbon maple syrup at home proved to be a challenge, an emotional voyage, a journey of redemption; indeed, it would take heart, passion, spirit and determination, along with grit and an almost superhuman will to succeed, in order to endure all of the Google searches necessary to reach that one proud, golden, magic moment where –

What? Sorry, I’ve watched too much Bob Costas lately. Anyway I ultimately triumphed over adversity and found two recipes, one with a little liquor, one with a lot. The first proposed flaming vanilla beams (sliced open, seeds scraped out) in 2 tablespoons of whiskey, with the remnants being poured into 1 cup of syrup. Problem was, most of the liquid evaporated in the flames, leaving only a very (very) subtle vanilla flavor. Maple syrup is pretty damn good by itself, and this recipe just doesn’t add enough to be worthwhile. As long as I’m quoting literary booze-hounds in this post, Henry Chinaski famously said, “If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise don’t even start.” I assume he was talking about spiking maple syrup, and so today’s recipe, as if you even had to ask, is the one with a lot of booze. It is delicious.

This recipe is very simple, with two pretty obvious main ingredients. First, the booze: I know that bourbon is from Kentucky, not Canada, and I know that there’s even a brand of whiskey called Canadian Club, which really would’ve fit better into the whole narrative of this year’s Olympics. But Canadian whiskey is rye whiskey. Bourbon is sweeter and has a stronger taste, and for our maple-flavoring purposes it seemed like the best choice. So now it’s a NAFTA recipe, sue me.

On to ingredient #2: maple syrup, like ice dancing, has been plagued by scoring controversies. In your average supermarket’s maple syrup aisle (hey, a guy can dream right?), Grade A maple seems like the obvious choice. But be warned, syrup grades are based on purity, not quality. Grade A wins its high marks for being sweeter and lighter colored because it’s been filtered more – because there’s less maple in it. If I just wanted sweetness from my syrup I’d save money and boil sugar cubes. Don’t take the maple out of our syrup! Buy the darker, more flavorful Grade B!

But uh… angry mobs aside, all maple syrup is pretty delicious. And here, arguably, is how to make it better:

Bourbon Maple Syrup

Adapted, oddly enough, from this kosher butternut squash bisque recipe.

1 cup bourbon

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup maple syrup

Optional: 2 vanilla beans (de-seeded) or a drop of vanilla extract

Stir brown sugar into bourbon over low heat until the mixture is thickened, reduced by half. Add maple syrup, simmer for 3 to 5 minutes and let cool to room temperature. I might also suggest adding a couple of vanilla beans (surprisingly expensive) or a drop of vanilla extract during the simmering – adding the one highlight of the first recipe to the strong caramel, maple and bourbon flavors of the second.

Naturally you’ll need some sort of syrup delivery device at this point. Kevin’s Johnny cakes recipe from a couple weeks ago would be an obvious choice. Vanilla ice cream, it turns out, is another perfect match. But I, as usual, fell back on my Dad’s pancakes. This recipe, one of the first things I ever learned to cook, makes pancakes that are a little smaller, denser, and more flavorful than your average fat, fluffy diner flapjacks.

Dad’s Pancakes

Serves 2

Dry:

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

1 Tbsp sugar

Wet:

1 cup liquid

1 egg

1 Tbsp oil

• Flour: I use 1/3 all purpose flour, 1/3 cornmeal, 1/3 white whole wheat flower. Collecting all those different flours may sound like a pain, but the flavor is well worth the effort and certainly got me hooked – I remember one morning years ago I woke up and discovered my parents were out of cornmeal flour, and I was so fixated on these pancakes that I decided it was worth my while spending 30 minutes using a mortar and pestle to grind polenta (which we did have)  into flour.

• Liquid: I use buttermilk for pancakes, regular milk for waffles. Double the oil for waffles. And if you really get wrapped up in the spirit (ugh, unintentional pun) of your boozy breakfast, go ahead and add a tablespoon of whiskey to the batter too. It’ll add a slight flavor and aroma to the finished product.

When the syrup was mixed, the pancakes fried, and the waffles… ironed?… I invited a handful of hungry friends over, and with Pat, a real, honest-to-Gretzky citizen of Canada, presiding over the festivities, we sat down to ponder whether maple syrup could really be improved. Now I love the stuff at least as much as the next guy, and I still don’t know if today’s recipe is really an improvement. But it is delicious, and it is different: slightly more liquidy, and with a rich caramel flavor. As Kevin mentioned in his Johnny cakes post, even old favorites can use a new twist some times, and it’s always worth experimenting with booze in your food.

Remember the Olympic motto, folks: The most important thing is not to win but to take part. I’m Bob Costas. Good night, America.

“We who approach our kitchens with ham-fisted dread must defy the Alexes of this world–those breezy souls who can reach into cupboards, rifle among the cereal boxes, and come back forty minutes later with a plate of Tunisian lambs’ jowls heightened with pomegranate seeds. Like seasoned gigolos, such people know only of success, repeated every night with subtle variation; they talk of “mastering” the art of cooking, whereas most of us are lucky to be its slaves, scalded and swearing, doomed to tiptoe along the verge of failure. They are the kings of time, too, wisely marinating their salmon for twenty-four hours, already savoring the triumph to come, while we splash on the fish sauce, the lime juice, and the tarlike lees from the bottom of the soy bottle, poke the flesh for ten minutes, and then, as much from boredom as famine, head for the stove.” – Anthony Lane.

Oh, yeah. And I made a tortilla…

That lengthy quote is from the New Yorker’s food issue that came out in November. I’d set it aside for a rainy day, and finally came back to it on a snowy one. If by some chance you’ve still got that issue kicking around, I highly recommend it, as I think it’s the best food issue of the last five years. The quote is from a short piece by Anthony Lane on eggs. The “Alex” that he’s referencing is a character from a T.S. Eliot poem who is able to throw together complete, delicious meals from whatever he finds in the pantry.

You know these people, and you’re jealous of them. At least I am. That sort of off-the-cuff ease with which I’ve seen people throw together spontaneous meals is a skill I desperately want to develop, but one that I also find elusive. Part of it is experience–I find this kind of cooking easier now than I did two years ago–and part of it is what kind of stuff you’ve actually got in the cupboard. But I think some of it is just unlearnable, and I doubt I’ll ever really be an Alex of this world, no matter how long I cook.

But in some ways, that just makes it all the more satisfying for us non-Alexes when we pull off an Alex-like success, as I did last weekend. Foraging through my fridge on Saturday morning, I came across a container full of the truly awful fries I’d ordered at a diner the night before. Why had I saved them? God only knows, but I was glad they were there, as they gave me an idea. Why does a tortilla espanola have to start with raw potatoes? Wouldn’t these starchy, bland fries make the perfect base?

I started, as is often the case, by sauteing some onions:

And meanwhile, I cut up the fries:

After the onions were nice and soft, I added in the potatoes to warm and beat three eggs in a large bowl. Once the potatoes had heated, I dumped the potato/onion mixture into the eggs and added salt and pepper as well as some shredded cheese that I had found tucked away on a back shelf. (Why not?) I added some fresh oil to the pan, and dumped the potato/onion/egg mixture back in. I waited for it to set (5-10 minutes) and then used a plate to flip it, but you can also throw it in the oven to finish, provided you’re using an oven-safe frying pan.

Alex would have been proud. Or maybe disgusted. I don’t care. Screw Alex, this was breakfast.

Before I started using this muffin, I would become a raging hunger monster by 11AM, snapping at clients, making interns cry, etc. My breakfast just couldn’t last! No cereal, fruit, bars could keep me full until lunch (and allow me to wake up 17 minutes before I have to leave, and not be disgusting like bran muffins). Hence, I started developing these muffins, which riff on several recipes for “morning glory” muffins, mostly from epicurious.

I have altered the recipe until they maximize filling-ness, tastiness, protein and have a good mix of vitamins and fiber.  The shredded fruit and vegetables are key: instead of being full of sugar and air, these dense muffins are full of taste and fiber. In the morning, I grab two and sometime toast and spread peanut butter before running out the door. Most importantly, these muffins freeze beautifully, so you can make a double batch, freeze half, and have breakfast for weeks in advance!

MAKES 12 BIG MUFFINS

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp salt

1/3 cup sugar (I have significantly cut down on this because I don’t think the muffins need to be supersweet. You may change it back to the original 1 cup if you like. Also, sometimes I mix brown and granulated sugar for fun).

¼ cup honey

¼ lb carrots (you can use up to 1.5x this amount and it will be fine)

½ cup pecans/walnuts,  chopped

¼ cup pumpkin seeds/sunflower seeds

½ cup raisins

3 large eggs

1 cup plain yogurt (you can use vegetable oil if you’re trying to gain weight).

2 tsp vanilla

1 Granny Smith apple

Preheat oven to 350 degrees .

First, mix together flours, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, then whisk in sugar and honey in the BIG BOWL. Shred the carrots and apple in a food processor (see picture). You should have between 2 and 3 cups of shredded fruit.

Mix the carrots and apples into the flour until each shred is coated (see picture). Then mix in all the nuts, seeds, and raisins.

Next, in a separate bowl, mix together eggs, yogurt, vanilla. Pour this wet mix into the dry mix and stir them all together. Butter/oil/spray/put doilies into your muffin tin. Put the batter in each cup, just up to the rim of the tray (or pile it on if you like huge muffin-tops).  For a classy touch, put a full pecan on top of each muffin. Bake muffins about 18 minutes and test with knife to see if they are done. If not, keep baking until there are. Let cool a bit in tin before taking out.

When I was a little kid, the most exciting days were always when my mom would take time off work and we’d go out to breakfast. Now, still, whenever I come home, my mom usually blocks off a morning for Bette’s. I’m not sure which is the greater draw for her, actually — some quality time with her ever-nomadic, ever-aging daughter or these pancakes. Probably the pancakes.

I, for one, don’t usually order pancakes when I go out for breakfast. I can never finish them, and I always end up wishing I had ordered something savory. This is why going to breakfast with your mom is nice! She will let you eat as much of her pancakes as you want, while you get to enjoy corned beef hash. The other reason I don’t usually order pancakes is, while it would take me longer than I want on a Saturday or Sunday morning to make a corned beef hash, it is pretty ridiculously easy to make pancakes. But still, Bette’s pancakes are so great, that logic didn’t quite hold up — because a Bette’s pancake was a pancake worth ordering in a restaurant, and one you couldn’t quite make yourself. Until now…

Or really, until 1999, when this recipe was first published in the San Francisco Chronicle (Bette’s also has a cookbook, and sells pancake and waffle mix). I just found it recently, though, when headed up to Northern Minnesota for a weekend with my writer compadres. For some reason, weekend trip, to me, screams pancakes. There’s something about everyone gathering, hungover, around noon, in a heated cabin, with coffee gurgling and bacon frying and everyone switching off to fry pancakes, coming out three at a time, to make for a leisurely brunch.

All we had in the cabin was a cast-iron pan, which was a little hard to get used to at first, but produced great results — crispier, browner pancakes than I’ve ever had before (you just have to ignore a little inevitable charring). A regular skillet will work just fine, though.

Beyond my reminiscing about breakfasts with my mother, and my revelation vis a vis cast-iron pans, and the addition of buttermilk in this recipe, Kevin has covered pancake-cooking technique (and cooking-ahead technique, and storing technique) extremely thoroughly in a previous post on regular, buttermilk-free pancakes.

Pancakes. One of the world’s most perfect foods

Buttermilk Pancakes
Adapted from Bette’s Oceanview Diner, via SF Chronicle
Makes about 24 four-inch pancakes

Ingredients

- 2 c. all-purpose flour
- 2 Tbsp. sugar
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 2 eggs
- 2 c. buttermilk
- 1/2 c. milk
- 1/4 c. unsalted butter, melted
- Butter/vegetable oil for griddle or skillet
- Optional: berries, sliced bananas, raisins or chopped toasted nuts

1. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.

2. Lightly beat the eggs with the buttermilk, milk and melted butter.

3. Just before you are ready to make the pancakes, add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients all at once, stirring just long enough to blend. The batter should be slightly lumpy.

4. I like to sprinkle the berries on the pancakes once they’re in the pan, but you can also stir them in now.

5. Heat a lightly buttered/oiled griddle or heavy skillet (or cast-iron pan) over medium-high heat (375 degrees on an electric griddle).

6. Pour a big spoonful (about ¼ c.) batter per pancake onto the griddle or skillet. Try to space the pancakes apart so they do not run together (you can see in the photo above that we were unsuccessful at this). This is the point where I like to sprinkle blueberries over, because I think it’s more fun that way, and also that they’re less likely to get crushed.

7. When bubbles appear on the surface of the pancakes and the undersides are lightly browned, turn and cook for about 2 minutes longer, until lightly browned on the bottom.

8. Serve immediately, with more butter, syrup, and, most importantly, bacon.

(Welcome to Breakfast Briefs. If you’re like me, you find yourself rushing out the door hungry and undercaffeinated many a morning, the inevitable result of which is $6 spent on a bad egg sandwich and coffee fit only for war criminals. In these posts, I’m going to share my tips and tricks for getting to work fed without adding more than 5 or 10 minutes to your morning routine.)

It’s been a while since I did a Breakfast Briefs post, but that’s because it’s been a while since I’ve done anything interesting for breakfast. It’s been a lot of yogurt and bananas at my desk, and it’s been getting old.

I saw some version of these muffins on a blog I can’t remember and had been meaning to try them for a while, so I finally went out, bought a muffin tin and some of those little paper muffin cups, and put on my breakfast hat (a jaunty fedora).

Baked goods are great for breakfast as you can just grab and go, but if I eat something sweet like a regular muffin for breakfast, I usually find myself hungry an hour later. Not so with these babies, which are basically an egg sandwich in muffin form.

And they’ve got green stuff in them, so they’ve got to be healthy, right?

The recipe here is an adaptation of several I’ve seen out on the interwebs.  There’s a fair amount of wiggle room in ingredients, I’d imagine, but try to keep the egg-flour-baking soda-cottage cheese ratio roughly the same. If you are a meat lover, you could definitely add bacon. Other ideas include bell pepper, tomatoes, or fresh herbs. I used scallions because I had some around, but any onion will do.

These muffins do tend to stick to the paper quite a bit. If you’ve got some spray olive oil or the like, greasing them up is probably a good idea. Popping one in the microwave for 30 seconds before eating also makes it easier to peel and warm to boot, but they are certainly good cold as well.

Savory Eggy Muffiny Breakfast Things

1/2 pound mushrooms,cleaned and sliced
1 bunch spinach, rinsed, and chopped
1/4 cup scallions, rinsed and sliced
1 cup flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
5 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup cheddar, grated

1. Saute scallions in a small amount of olive oil for 2-3 minutes.  Add mushrooms and cook for another 3-4 minutes.

2. Add spinach. The spinach needs a little water in the pan to steam. If you just washed it, the water on the leaves will be enough. If it’s had a chance to drain, add two tablespoons of water.

3. Meanwhile, combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add eggs, cottage cheese, and cheddar. Stir to combine.

4. When the shrooms/spinach are cooked, let them cool, then add them to the mix. If there is a ton of water left in the pan, you may want to drain some off first.

5. Grease muffin cups if desired. Fill cups with batter until almost full. (This recipe makes about 8-12 muffins depending on size.)

6. Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes or until tops are nicely browned and/or a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Egg salad is another thing (like coleslaw) that I thought was pretty disgusting until I made it myself. And then I realized that it’s delicious — and easy, and cheap. And endlessly variable. Here are some guidelines: egg salad is best when it’s freshly made, slightly warm, not too mayonnaisey, and served open-faced on a piece of toasted bread. It needs something a little acidic, something a little onion-y/crunchy, and a little spicing.

Another guideline: Egg salad likes to have other things mixed into it, or eaten on top or alongside it. Consider egg salad your canvas! I have listed a couple suggestions for toppings and side munchies below, which I’ve distinguished by whether you want to put them directly on top of your sandwich and eat altogether in one bite (toppings) or whether you want to eat between bites of sandwich, for a change of flavor/texture (side munchies). Side muchies can, I suppose, also be toppings, depending on how adventurous you are.

And, as the last feather in egg salad’s cap of endless flexibility, it should be noted that it can serve as any of the three meals of the day: a savory breakfast, a quick lunch, or a light supper. So get crackin’.

Endlessly Variable Egg Salad

Serves 1, heartily

Ingredients

- 3 eggs

- 1 Tbsp. mayonnaise

- a tablespoon or two of some kind of crunchy, onion-y thing (chives, green onion, red onion, shallots)

- dash of something acidic (lemon juice, white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar)

- salt and freshly ground black pepper, plus a couple sprinklings of any number of other spices (paprika, cayenne, crushed red pepper, dill, tarragon)

- good bread, preferably with raisins or cranberries and/or walnuts (some added texture), toasted

- toppings (if desired) can include but are not limited to: fresh or sun-dried tomatoes, anchovies, sardines, sauerkraut, etc.

- side munchies can include but are not limited to: figs, cheese, olives, celery, carrots, etc.

1. Boil eggs: bring a medium pot filled with 2-3 inches of water to boil. Carefully place eggs in pot, cover pot with lid slightly ajar, and let boil for 8-10 minutes.

2. Drain and cover eggs with cold water for 1-2 minutes to cool. Peel eggs and place in small to medium sized bowl. Mash with back of fork until mostly smooth but with noticeable chunks.

3. Add the rest of the ingredients, mash a little more. Serve on top of bread, open-faced, in a composed plate.

Fact: 1780294 out of 1780294 American Gladiator contestants who ate this for breakfast kicked the patooties of contestants who ate Wheaties or Kurt Vonnegut’s 1973 novel for breakfast. You just can’t argue with those numbers.

For a long time, I always skewed to the “-unch” side of “brunch,” taking the non-breakfast savory route out whenever possible. In college, that usually meant settling for last night’s tofu parmigiana over danishes or “Eli’s Breakfast Sandwiches.” And I was one of roughly two people I can remember who could fathom touching the salad bar, even if brunch ran from 11 to 1h30. But now, in this post-mandatory meal plan age, I can create a happy compromise between my palate and gastronomic acceptability norms. It’s a breakfast salad. And it’s so freaking nutrient-packed that dietitians should shed low-sodium tears of hushed awe upon beholding its calcium-rich glory. And it tastes like sweet, nutty victory.

Ingredients:
- Salad greens (arugula is a must)
- Small (gala) apple, sliced any way you like–about half of one will do
- Greek yogurt–as much as you’d like
- 1-2 slices of your favorite hearty bread, sliced into bite-sized chunks
- Honey or agave nectar, to taste
- Black pepper
- Mixed seeds for garnish (optional; I had some from my multi-seed bread bag)

Create a bed of salad greens. Throw down half of the bread chunks. Spoon on as much yogurt as you want over them. Add the remaining bread chunks and top with the apples. Drizzle some sweet stuff over it. Sprinkle on the seeds. Crack a little pepper on top. Go out and kick some patootie. Or read some Vonnegut.

Quick–>minimal time.
Simple–>minimal ingredients.
Cold–>minimal end-user energy use.

And now, a word from our unpaid author: Got extra bread? Make your next meal with this same ingredient list for The Sandwich to Write Home About.

There are certain packaged foods that are simply the Platonic ideal of their kind, never to be bested by homemade versions: Oreos, Heinz ketchup, and Coca-Cola being my top three. Is the taste of these foodstuffs so perfectly irreplaceable because they are actually perfectly formulated? Or is it just that we are so used to those flavors that nothing else will quite do? If I had grown up eating Newman-O’s and Hunt’s ketchup, and drinking Pepsi, would I now be just as insistent on those brands as the apotheosis of sandwich cookies, tomato-based condiments, and corn-syrupy carbonated beverages?

I have one more to add to the list, but this one I feel guilty about: JIFFY Corn Muffin Mix. I felt way more guilty about it until my recent realization that EVERYONE loves Jiffy, or at least everyone who wasn’t born and/or raised in the South (and here, “everyone” mostly means my Gossip-Girl-dinner-party-club and Deb at Smitten Kitchen, which is a large and varied enough sample size for me).

Still, while I have no need for homemade Oreos, ketchup (Heinz or otherwise), or Coke, I would actually like to make cornbread from scratch. I’ve made it a couple times in the last year, always with recipes from Southern cookbooks and always in a cast-iron skillet. And it always came out great, but as an entirely different species of cornbread than I am used to — crunchy on the outside, very bready, and extremely savory. What I want is soft, cakey, and sweet. There, I said it. All Southerners can now crucify me.

So I was delighted to find that Deb — and Dorie Greenspan, the original source of this recipe — feel the same way. They promised a sweet, cakey muffin that would make me forget the Jiffy box, and while nothing may ever get me to forget Jiffy, these muffins came close enough that I don’t have to wear a big scarlet “J” on my forehead.

The one thing that always bothers me about corn muffins is that, as golden as they may be, they’re a bit too uniform. These have a nice textural contrast from the fresh corn kernels galore stuffed in, but I still wanted to mix up the color a bit. Also, as much as I love me a sweet muffin, I don’t mind a touch of savory in my morning, and I also don’t mind if the sweet-savory is all in one (all the better!). So, on a bit of inspiration, I bought a nice-looking bunch of basil, chopped it up pretty roughly, and mixed it in with the corn.

Perfection, best served with Frog Hollow peach preserves and a cup of tea. And without cardboard packaging or an R&D lab in sight.

Fresh Corn and Basil Muffins, to Rival Jiffy

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Makes 12 regular-sized muffins or 48 miniature ones

Ingredients

- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup yellow cornmeal, preferably stone-ground
- 6 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg (optional)
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 3 tablespoons corn oil
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg yolk

- 1 cup corn kernels (add up to 1/3 cup more if you’d like) – fresh, frozen or canned (in which case they should be drained and patted dry)

- 1 cup basil, roughly chopped

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Fit the molds with paper muffin cups (you can also spray, but the paper muffin cups make clean-up/transport a whole heckofalot easier).

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg, if you’re using it. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the buttermilk, melted butter, oil, egg and yolk together until well blended.

3. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough – the batter will be lumpy, and that’s just the way it should be.

4. Stir in the corn kernels and basil. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

5. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes (12 minutes for minis), or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean (if you have to err one way or the other, these should be undercooked, otherwise they’ll get dry and crumbly). Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold.

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