Do you remember the Big Breakfast Cookies from the old Silver Palate cookbook? This is the muffin version of those beloved ‘meal-in-a-cookie’ treats. These banana/blueberry/raspberry muffins are made with spelt and whole wheat flour to be extra healthy, and sweetened with maple syrup (including a generous lashing of syrup across the muffin tops to assure perfect moistness).
It’s healthy (homemade yogurt ice cream on fresh sliced apples,) it tastes great, and best of all, it’s very, very messy. These ice cream sandwiches are meant to be eaten outside, hopefully not too far from a hose or a pool. You must remember that feeling: hot and sweaty meets messy and cold and delicious. It’s a little adventure.
Maybe the problem is that we eat onion rings with burgers and steaks and other foods that aren’t heart-healthy, but how about some world-class onion rings presented on a bed of yogurt-based, lightly dressed mesclun salad? Isn’t that a main course to indulge in, guilt-free?Finding the balance between what you’ve always loved to eat, and what you think you should eat to be healthy is worth the effort. Because after all, food is more than sustenance, it’s one of the great pleasures of life.
Ginger snaps are my favorite cookie, so as we swelter through this ‘worst-that-I can-remember-in-forty-years’ summer in Washington, I realize it might be time to start thinking about changing how we eat to accommodate these weather changes. I took my favorite ginger snap recipe and made several half batches, adding varying amounts of chili powder to find just the right amount of heat to get the body glowing and cooling off. I really like these; in fact they may be the first cookie meant to be paired with a beer.
This beautiful recipe, adapted from the Malibu Farm cookbook, is a perfect brunch buffet dish. The green tomatoes provide an acidic counterpoint to the potatoes, and it’ll feel familiar to you, because tomatoes and cheese are gustatorial soulmates. It’s colorful and hearty and bursting with the flavors of late summer.
