Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

There are as many oatmeal secrets in America as there are splattered recipe cards – everyone seems to have a grandmother’s trick or a magazine shortcut to oatmeal bliss. Me? Forget fancy training and hand-kissed organics, because I’d never abandon this pleasure: pulling back the Quaker Oats tab with a satisfying “whh-ch,” getting a nice wholesome whiff, and then turning over the recipe to make Vanishing Oatmeal Cookies.

Oh, there are more glamorous recipes, more wholesome recipes, certainly more interesting recipes. But when it comes to oatmeal cookies, I don’t mess with the oven gods. Simple is best, and tradition rules.

Still – one gets creative, and on this particular day I sorely tempted Quaker man’s patience by mixing a handful of white chocolate chips into the dough. He looked at me sternly as they went into the bowl.

I say keep the base traditional – it can hardly be improved – and when white-haired guy’s not looking, throw something delicious in for fun. Here are 25 ways to trick out your oatmeal cookies – not necessarily ground-breaking, but all tasty and all in one place. I guarantee they’ll vanish.

Wow, I was exhausted yesterday.  Somehow the kid's first day at school wore me out.  I'm not sure how that happened since all I did was sit around and wait for them to come home while I talked a bunch of jibber-jabber on Facebook

By mid-afternoon I was tired.  Doing nothing can suck the life out of you.  I decided I only had enough energy to make dip for dinner.  So I whipped up this Feta Pepper Dip.

However, as the dinner hour quickly approached, the responsibility of being a mother and a wife extinguished my extreme lack of motivation.  I am happy to report chicken and salad made it to the table along with this awesome dip.

Here's whatI love about it...the salty feta, with the slight heat of the pepperoncini and the tang of the lemon zest make a tasty little treat. The end all is to it up with barbecue chips.  The barbecue chips are really a must here, the sweetness of them adding another layer of flavor.

But I'm also thinking this would be some kind of heaven slathered on a grilled lamb burger.  That just might be lunch for us today.

So far I have kept my New Year’s resolution to eat healthy. (Okay, so maybe except for the wine and a little chocolate.) This commitment includes a granola breakfast. (Later in the day, the menu gets very green.)

I have been obsessing about making the perfect granola to support my resolution. I have played with ingredients such as coconut (all formats: oil, sugar, shredded), millet, dried apricots, wheat germ, quinoa, etc. and I intend to continue messing with the recipe just to keep things interesting.

But as of today, I’m eating the one described below. It’s tasty, and makes me feel almost good about the fact that I’m not eating a croissant with jam.

Try it, knowing you can substitute almost everything with something else, if you are feeling granola obsessive. (This may not be the case for you if you, say, have a life.)

Now that we’re in the peak of apple picking season, I realized that I never posted a basic apple pie recipe. Some people find making pies a daunting task. There are stories, mostly said in hushed tones, about my mother throwing more than a few pie crusts against the wall.

I must admit, rolling out a homemade pie crust can be intimidating at first. There are several variables that can throw a “wrench” in your dough – humidity, temperature of the butter, amounts of water, types of flour, overworking the dough - all can influence the outcome of your crust.

Once you master a pie crust recipe, and you truly learn the “feel” of pastry in its various stages, it will be a breeze to roll out a pie. If it still seems too challenging, there are some acceptable store bought pie dough brands.

Wholly Wholesome, which has won the praise of Cook’s Illustrated, Good Housekeeping, Real Simple Magazine and CBS The Early Show, offers organic easy to use rolled pie dough and pre-made pie shells.