Anyway, seeing the maple syrup bags on the trees reminded me that I am due for another batch of granola. This recipe is my sister Kathy’s recipe with is an adaptation of a few other recipes. A majority of my recipe is adapted from the blog katie did with some additions from Nut & Seed Granola from Feeding the Whole Family: Cooking with Whole Foods by Cynthia Lair.

I know my sister is very busy with her work and two young girls so I’m very impressed that she started doing this. When I asked her what inspired her to make her own granola and she said:

I was inspired by two things: wanting to eat healthier and wanting to make more homemade food.  It’s such an easy recipe and can be doubled, which would make it last even longer.  Plus it’s versatile and can be eaten for breakfast, a snack or for dessert.

The 60′s hippy food eventually gained a bad reputation once the mainstream cereal companies got a hold of it and removed much of the health fiber and added artificial sweeteners and extra fats and basically turned the artisan-made, preservative-free granola into candy. Lately granola has been building back its reputation of a whole and healthy food. I’m glad my sister reintroduced me. It has quickly become a staple in my diet.

The only thing I changed in the recipe below is that I added 1/4 less honey and a bit more water because the first time I made it it was a little too sweet. Maybe the honey I buy locally is just a bit sweeter. I HIGHLY recommend this recipe!

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Add fresh, frozen or dried fruit and and milk or yogurt.  For a yummy dessert add a few chocolate chips and serve it over ice cream or frozen yogurt.

I know, I know, I haven’t been posting much lately, ’cause, like most of you, the holiday season to-do list has taken over. We haven’t been cooking all that much either, and when we do it’s a vat of soup or a double batch of whatever so that we can eat leftovers while trying to knock out the holiday to-do list. Adding the time-consuming task of photographing as I cook makes posting on The Savage Feast rare this month. However, I have managed to put together a couple of holiday posts that will be short and sweet (pun intended) for your enjoyment.

First up, kahlua!

This is a recipe that has been adapted from a recipe we got from a friend of ours when we lived in East Lansing, MI. He would make two batches at a time, one to save for the allotted time of 6-8 weeks, and one he called “potential”. The “potential” was there to check from time to time to make sure the other was aging properly to reach its potential. The truth is, it’s good the day you make it and hard to resist, so the second bottle is there to appease the lack of self control.

Here is the thing, though: espresso is really the best way to go with this. Not espresso pods or one of those so-called espresso machines that you can buy at Target. I’m talking real espresso. If you don’t own a good home espresso machine you have a few options. You can brew really strong coffee, but make sure you are using quality fresh beans. You can use instant espresso (not really my favorite option) or you can make a trip down to your favorite coffee shop and buy a few shots. I called my favorite coffee shop, Mighty Good Coffee, and asked what it would cost for 10 1 oz shots of espresso and they said if you order a double shot of espresso and add 4 shots (doubles) to that it would only cost $5.20. If you say you want shots added to one double shot it’s much cheeper than ordering 5 double shots. That is a bargain in my opinion.

One more note: get the vanilla bean. We used a Madagascar vanilla beans for our recipe. They are kind of expensive at your local grocery store, but you can order online for much less. Here is a link to a Michigan based company, Beanilla, that sells all kinds of vanilla products including 3 Madagascar vanilla beans for $4.50. Try different types of beans for slightly different flavors.

This is a GREAT gift idea and even if you make it now and it isn’t (technically) ready until February, that’s fine. I can’t think of a better thing to be ready to drink in February to beat the winter blues.

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Because of conflicting schedules with family this year, Thanksgiving day ended up being just Chris and me. We debated about what we wanted to do that day since it was just the two of us. We tossed around the idea of doing our annual tamale-making fest that day rather than around Christmastime. We discussed going out to dinner or just having pizza and watching a bunch of movies. Ultimately we decided that we really wanted to have a Thanksgiving meal, a slightly toned down Thanksgiving feast, but one that still kept us in the kitchen for a good part of the day.

On Wednesday, before Thanksgiving, we shopped for the food. We filled our grocery cart and waited our turn in line to check out. We loaded the conveyor belt at the checkout counter with piles of food and watched the total go up as each item was rung through. It was one of the largest shopping trips we have had in a while. As soon as the last item was rung up, the checkout lady said, “Where’s the turkey?” I said, “No turkey for us, we’re vegetarians.” She quickly replied, “Then what do you eat?”  I kind of laughed and pointed to the many bags of food and told her, “All of that.” It took her a minute to make the connection and then she smiled.

That wasn’t the first time I was asked where the turkey was when I went shopping for Thanksgiving. Despite popular belief, most of what people eat at Thanksgiving are vegetables, fruits, breads and desserts. Everything that Chris and I enjoyed for Thanksgiving we still eat and enjoy now, minus the turkey. So we enjoyed a Thanksgiving dinner for two that consisted of, Vegetarian Wellington, mashed potatoes, squash, peas, kale, gravy, herbed rolls and banana cream pie.

We started the day off with breakfast sandwiches on homemade whole wheat English muffins followed by a long hike and then back in the kitchen for more cooking. It was a great Thanksgiving.

I don’t know about you, but when the temperature drops I crave more substantial savory foods like mac ‘n cheese, creamy soups and of course anything made with potatoes. Maybe it’s our bodies way of trying to fatten up for winter, which is something I don’t need, but I’m still having trouble resisting rich foods with lots of comforting carbs.

To satisfy this craving, how about a bake with lots of root vegetables and seasoned with savory Indian spices? It’s actually a very easy meal but requires a few spices that you might not have on hand, like dried chiles, and black mustard seed. You can get them at most Asian or Indian markets. I found both at Z Z’s Produce at 4092 Packard St. in Ann Arbor. They are a must for Indian cuisine.

A side note on black mustard seed: When I was first learning about this spice I looked it up on Wikipedia and, under “History”, it said this.

“The earliest reference to mustard is in India from the story of Buddha in the 5th century BCE. Gautama Buddha told the story of the grieving mother (Kisa Gotami) and the mustard seed. When a mother loses her only son, she takes his body to the Buddha to find a cure. The Buddha asks her to bring a handful of mustard seeds from a family that has never lost a child, husband, parent or friend. When the mother is unable to find such a house in her village, she realizes that death is common to all, and she cannot be selfish in her grief.”

Click HERE for the complete text on The Mustard Seed.

I just thought that was cool.

All of the other ingredients should be available regular grocery stores. You can use canola oil but ghee gives it a more authentic Indian flavor, and I highly recommend it. By the way, you can make your own ghee. Here is a link to learn more. We make our own from unsalted organic butter (when it goes on sale, of course).

As for the vegetables, it’s up to you. I like the combination of carrots, potatoes and onions but you can use whatever root vegetables like. Have fun with it. Use different colored potatoes or carrots as well as red and white onions.

Oven roasted root vegetables with Indian spices

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* Raita is Indian condiment made with yogurt and is traditionally, raita is seasoned with cilantro, ground cumin, mint and red chili powder but can also can include vegetables like cucumber and tomato. It is used as an “antidote” to spicy food, to cut the heat.

If there is one signature Savage recipe, this is it: baked stuffed jalapeno poppers. We wait till the peppers are red and most flavorful, then we stuff them with a mixture of cheese, fresh herbs, garlic and onion to give them a flavor that is beyond fabulous!

If you don’t like hot foods, well, this recipe is not for you. I guess you could do this with mini bell peppers or with small mild chili peppers, but that would be no fun.

We grow tons of jalapenos (mostly Biker Billy hybrids from Burpee) and make anywhere from 400-600 poppers in the fall. We partially bake them in the oven and then freeze them in ziplock bags. Just pop the frozen poppers in the oven at 400°F and bake them for about 20-25 minutes, add some salsa and sour cream and you have yourself a quick and delicious meal.

Another way we use up all our extra peppers from the garden is to dice or slice them up, lay them in a single layer on a cookie sheet covered in wax paper and freeze them. After they are completely frozen, dump the frozen chopped peppers into a ziplock bag. This way you can grab handfuls at a time for different recipes. We do this with all our peppers, including bell peppers. Since we started doing this we haven’t had to buy a single pepper in the winter.

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If you google summer roll, you will see that the filling is a little different in each recipe, so play around with the filling and add stuff you like or have in your garden. The difference between my recipe and most other summer roll recipes is that I cook some of the harder vegetables until they are soft. This does two things. First, by cooking them, I can add an Asian flavor to the vegetables with sesame oil, coconut milk and other things. Also, cooking softens the vegetables which helps ensure that they won’t poke through the delicate rice paper wrappers when you roll them.

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Finish wrapping the remaining rolls and serve with the sauce below.

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Leftover rolls can be wrapped individually  in a moist paper towel and refrigerated. The rice paper wrappers will toughen a little, but that has never bothered me and I think they make a great lunch the next day!

It’s fair to say that our tomato plants are the most important vegetable we grow. We start the seeds in February from seeds saved from tomatoes the year before. We pamper the seedlings along under grow lights with a space heater to keep them warm and an oscillating fan to strengthen them. Then, in April, the seedlings get moved to bigger pots and fed organic fertilizer. As soon as the days start warming up, the plants get shuffled in and out to start the hardening-off process and, eventually, sometime early in May, I have a restless night of sleep concerned about the plants as they spend their first cool night outside in the hardening box.

Sometime around the middle of May, when the forecast appears to be frost-free, the tomatoes get planted in the garden. The rows are planned out, the stakes are pounded in and a special just-for-our-tomatoes drip irrigation system is laid down. As for planting the tomatoes, we don’t just dig holes and plop them in. No way! They get the royal treatment with black garden cloth, rich organic compost from the compost bin, and a system of planting that Chris jokingly calls The Savage Method, a planting procedure that I came up with to protect the plants from early blight.  They always look so fragile in the ground right after planting so there is a fair amount of worrying as the first few unstable weather patterns pass through.

The tomatoes get put on a regular watering schedule and get checked daily for problems such as cut worms. As they grow taller, they get tidied up weekly with a technique called the “Flordia Weave” to keep them up off the ground. Then there’s the tomato horn worm. We watch closely for signs of these nasty destructive worms. We don’t always get them, but when we do it’s a twice a day hunt to remove them. You can’t miss a day or they could destroy most of a plant. This year was a bad year and we removed nearly 100 of those despicable pests.

Now it’s late July and hot and humid and we’re weaving the plants and picking off worms and cutting low branches and cringing at the first signs of blight and, as we stand there surrounded by tomato plants and mosquitos, one of us inevitably says, “Why do we do this every year?” A question answered only after biting into that first perfectly ripe tomato: “This is why.”

We love our tomatoes, but it’s time to say good-bye.

These plants have given us a lot. We’ve been eating fresh tomatoes for two months and canned 54 quarts, but last Saturday, after we made the decision not to cover them any more if frost is in the forecast. This decision made me a little sad because they were are still covered with green tomatoes. I wanted to do all I could to get the tomatoes red, so I did a little research I found something referred to as root pruning. Basically you sever some of the roots to shock the plant and this, in turn, sends a signal to the tomatoes to ripen. I had my doubts, but I tried it and a week later it appears to be working! By this weekend I should be able to harvest a bunch of red tomatoes.

So, in honor of our wonderful tomatoes plants, I will use the last tomatoes to make a large batch of tomato sauce. To this sauce I will add a few peppers from the garden, ripe and red. I will add onions and garlic, both from our garden, already harvested and just waiting for their next recipe. I will also add to this sauce the last of the zucchinis, parsley and basil and a healthy bunch of oregano before it hibernates for the winter. The sauce will go into tupperware containers and put in the freezer.

Sometime in the middle of winter the last container of sauce will be taken out of the freezer, thawed and eaten for dinner.

Maybe that will be the night we pull out our garden log and make plans for our next garden.

Swiss chard has quickly become one of my favorite foods and I like to add it to many of our recipes that don’t call for it. For a simple but amazing side dish, chop it up, wilt it down in a pan with olive oil and add a little balsamic vinegar and toasted almonds. Or, for my favorite way to eat swiss chard, grill it. Grilling really brings out its nutty flavor and even those who do not care for Swiss chard will most likely love this recipe.

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Serve as a side dish or as a main dish with a side of rice.