Strawberries, Yogurt and Granola

If you read my last post you might have anticipated my next post would be for creamy mushroom soup.  Hope you aren't too disappointed to see berries instead.  The soup recipe came from a highly credible source, Cook's Illustrated.  The soup turned out okay, but I didn't love it.  I haven't given up on it though.  I have some ideas of what may have held this soup back from being great so I'll give another go at some point.

In the meantime, what I know is great, are fresh, ripe, sweet strawberries straight from the fields to the farmer's market.  Living in southern California gives me pretty good access to local berries early in the season.  The funny thing is I didn't have my first berries of the year at home.  Two weeks ago Hubby and I took a trip to the mid-west and I was pleasantly surprised when some phenomenal strawberries appeared on my yogurt and granola breakfast in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan.  I thought perhaps it was a fluke.  Then last week I was in New Jersey for work and I had more amazing strawberries.  Really, really amazing.  I've had strawberries on the brain ever since.  I knew a trip to my local farmer's market was number one top priority business this past weekend. 

I wasn't disappointed.  The market was teeming with berries, some big, some small, some gi-normous.  I sampled the small berries and they had the most unbelievably sweet flavor.  Sold!  I'll take 3 baskets, please!  Hubby doesn't eat strawberries so that's 3 baskets of berry heaven all for me.  I decided the first order of business was a simple, but delicious, application of my new found treasures.  Vanilla yogurt topped with fresh cut berries and crunchy honey kissed granola.  I plan to rinse and repeat at least a few more days this week.  A great way to start the day!

I always struggle with storing strawberries.  I feel like they start growing mold the day after I bring them home.  So I asked the girl behind the table at the farmer's market how she recommends storing them.  She suggested placing a papertowel in the bottom of a tupperware and placing a single layer of berries down.  Cover with another paper towel and a layer of berries, and repeat.  Store the tupperware in the fridge.  I'm only on day two, but I think it's going to work.  I hope to be posting more strawberry focused posts this week so I'll let you know how this method holds up.

Enjoy!

Vanilla Yogurt with Strawberries and Granola

3/4 cup low fat vanilla yogurt
1/2 cup fresh strawberries, washed, stems removed and cut in quarters
1/3 cup granola (my favorite is honey flax granola from Fresh and Easy)

Place 1/2 of the yogurt in a small bowl and top with 1/2 of the granola.  Spoon the remaining yogurt on top and finish with berries and remaining granola.

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Blueberry Almond Granola

I totally caved. I wasn't going to bake this week. I was feeling lazy and thinking about the many many ingredients in this recipe was more than my brain could handle. But my fellow SMS Bakers inspired me to look beyond the long list of ingredients. Every one's granola looked so great and it seems there is a lot of leeway with this recipe in terms of substitutions. So what that I didn't have rye flakes, powdered milk, sunflower seeds, pure maple syrup and the variety of dried fruits called for in Melissa Murphy's granola?


I did have oats, slivered almonds and pumpkin seeds for the dry ingredients. For the coating I used the sugar free imitation maple syrup in my fridge, honey and all the spices. In addition I added some vanilla extract and I had dried blueberries on hand (left over from the biscotti recipe several weeks back). Even though the long list of items seems overwhelming, this recipe is incredibly simple to put together. I will definitely make homemade granola again. So many options! Check out what other SMS bakers did this week here.


My granola turned out pretty good. I halved the recipe and ended up with a lot of granola! I cannot imagine making the full recipe. It turned out a little browner than I hoped and I would have had added another 1/2 cup of honey or some brown sugar to give it a slightly sweeter kiss. But I generally put granola on already sweetened yogurt, so it's probably just right for that.



Thanks to Wendy of Pink Stripes for hosting this week. Check out her site to get the recipe.

Thanks to Shandy and the other ladies for inspiring me to bake this week!