Say hello to my new morning companion: MixMyGranola granola. It’s delicious, all-natural and preservative-free, comes in sexy packaging and it’s made just the way I like it. Did I just say sexy? Can’t blame a girl for liking good packaging.

We love granola. Dan snacks on it, and I enjoy mine with yogurt. So we were more than happy to accept Raoul’s offer to try their product. Raoul, Andreas and Matt are the guys behind MixMyGranola.com, the hip new website that lets you customize your very own blend of granola.

The idea is simple: Choose one of the delicious organic, all-natural or low-fat granola bases. Then choose from more than 50 ingredients like fruits, nuts, seeds, and extras, including all-time classics like cranberries, blueberries, almonds and organic raisins, or unique ingredients such as hemp seeds, organic gummy bears and goji berries to create your individual granola mix – exactly the way You like it. Then, be creative and give your mix a name and check out.

Dan and I were like kids in a candy store when we created our own granola mixes. Go check out the website and you’ll see what I mean. I love that we could see the actual nutritional information (and cost) of our granola mixes as we added each ingredient.

Each personalized granola mix came in a (sexy) sleek 16-ounce recyclable tube that is similar to a Pringles container. And the labels look like these:

Each mix you create has a unique Mix-ID that identifies your particular blend. This allows you to re-order the same mix for faster check out next time if you want to stick to the same one. I like that a lot.

We were amused by the extra ingredient included: “lots of LOVE“. I kid you not, and you can see above for yourself. We also noticed that our mixes were prepared and signed by Andreas, complete with a happy face. I love all these small details. It is always a treat when you come across products made with love, passion and pride.

Now let’s move on to our MixMyGranola mixes! Show and tell time…

Joy’s Granola:

Pretty colorful, huh? It was a fantastic blend of salty and sweet, if I may say so myself. I picked the organic granola as my base and added goji berries (the red-orange that stands out), dried bing cherries (big dark dried fruit on there), amaranth seeds (the tiny bird seed-like seeds on the lower right corner), pistachios, sunflower seeds and cranberries. I absolutely loved MY blend — I mean, I was afraid that I would finish it in a day!

Dan’s Granola:

Dan’s mix is sweeter with the French vanilla granola as the base, combined with cranberries, roasted almonds, amaranth seeds, honey smacks, cocoa crisp bite. He loved his crunchy-sweet blend.

Do they really taste like they’re made with lots of love? You bet!

Dan and I love this great and excellently executed idea for custom granola mixes. My only problem is — Why didn’t we think of this first?! Haha. This is a perfect solution to our (obvious) differences in granola preference. I also think it would be great as a gift for the people who seem to have everything. For them, you need to create a need, and what better way than to introduce them to something healthy (and looks hip!) they didn’t know they’ve been deprived of.

We loved the granola so much that we thought YOU might want to try them! Soooo…

We’re giving away a $25 gift certificate to MixMyGranola.com!!! :-)

That would get you about two custom granola mixes, including delivery. Isn’t that great?!?!?!

Ok, there are several things you can do to enter the draw for this yummy prize:

1. (For 2 entries) Sign up for our brand-spanking new monthly newsletter. We’ll include index card-size printable recipes, cooking tips, household cleaning, organization, and productivity tips, featured ingredients, our favorite kitchen tools and gadgets, discounts and giveaways, and much more!

2. (For 1 entry each tweet) Tweet this:

Win $25 to create your own granola blends at MixMyGranola.com http://foodurl.info/18h3 from @gourmeted  #gourmetedMMG

** Don’t forget the hash tag #gourmetedMMG. That will help us track your tweets. ** [Max. of 3 tweets to be honored as entries per user to avoid spamming the twitterverse for a week.]

3. (For 1 entry) Blog about it. Link to this contest on your blog post. [Max 1 entry per blog]

4. (For 1 entry) Leave a comment with an answer to this question: What do YOU like in your granola? :-) [Max 1 comment per person.]

Winners will be randomly drawn. Contest ends next week, March 3, 2009 at 5pm PST.

Good luck!

** The giveaway prize was generously provided by MixMyGranola.com. Thank you, Raoul! **

It sounds like Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, right? Haha.Here’s the story behind it: I got the recipe from Tita Thess, who got it from her husband, who got it from his co-worker. See how this works? Plagiarecipism! :) This recipe’s been around, alright, but it’s still as fantastic as when it was first discovered. I love that it doesn’t have vegetable oil as I’ve seen in other recipes (and also used in my Almond Butter Banana Bread with Cinnamon Crumble Topping). I don’t know…something about the oil that makes me want to substitute it whenever possible.

So back to the baking…how did it fare? The baked bread is dense, moist, full of the banana taste and the ‘crust’ is the best part! I’m not sure if it was because of the pan, but I had a beautiful even crust all around the bread. The slices look beautiful and the taste definitely lives up to the inviting facade.

I’m so glad I tried Tita Thess’s recipe (I love getting recipes from family and friends!!!). I followed it, including her recommendation to use 2 cups of mashed bananas, and skipped the nuts and raisins. This is a winning recipe with Dan, who does not like bananas, but ended up LOVING the bread.

For the loaf pan, I used the ceramic kind and lined it with two sheets of parchment paper along its length and width. No need to grease it with oil.

I like this method better than spraying it with oil because it makes it so easier and neater to take out the bread once it’s baked.

Look at it! I honestly do not know how I was able to wait overnight before I ate slice after slice…after slice.

This is one bread that would really leave a mark/aroma not only in your kitchen. In fact our apartment smelled of delicious banana bread the entire night and woke us up in the morning.

We still have more than half a loaf to ourselves. I’m going to try warming it up and slathering it with heavenly butter (I love, love, love, butter) for breakfast, then OJ…mmm. Dan and I are driving out to the Desert Botanical Garden to see the Chihuly exhibit so we can pack some up to go, too. Better than store bought. ;-)

I urge you to try it this weekend! Continue Reading

It’s no secret that I’m impressionable when it comes to food. I’m the poster child for culinary autosuggestion. Mention some kind of food, save for monkey brain, and chances are I just might develop a hankering for it in a few minutes. It has been a lifelong crux, there’s nothing a voracious eater can do.

Early last week I saw Martha make Minestra Maritata with Chef Nate Appleman (whose A16: Food + Wine book was given to me last Christmas) and at that instant I wanted to make some meatball soup. That’s the power of Martha. Or it could just because her show is right before lunch.

We bought a family pack of ground beef from Whole Foods last Sunday and you bet I was going to make full use of it. This is the first of many dishes I’ve made from it. It might be fitting to call it Recession Meat because if I was to track our consumption of it, it  it might actually suffice for a week’s worth of dinners (and my lunches). Perhaps we should start a Recession/Depression series as Denise and Lenny have on their site, seeing that we both go to WF for our groceries. Yes, you could still save and survive during these times while eating and shopping organic, you just need to be more aware of what you buy and planning your meals.

Having said that, planning a whole week’s menu is unheard of in my family. The only ones I remember doing that was our household help, and then I end up ruining them sometimes because of my last-minute food cravings (haha). I’m trying to start a semi-planning kind of thing last week. Kind of. I find cooking inspiration and suggestion from cooking books or magazines, Twitter friends, Food Network or Martha and tweak recipes to accommodate the ingredients that we have.

I made this dish the night that Obama had his 8pm ET speech last week, so I forgot to turn the meatballs halfway through the baking process. They still turned out perfect, thank goodness. I was able to make 49 meatballs out of a 750 grams of meat mixture using a tablespoon to measure each, so they would look fairly uniform. I only used 30 meatballs for the soup and froze the rest for some spaghetti and meatballs.

These meatballs made our kitchen smell like a weekend breakfast of Italian sausages. Yummy. You can eat them with gravy or ketchup, too.

The soup base is a combination of parmesan cheese broth (from boiled parmesan rinds) and beef broth. You can save your rinds from cheese blocks or you can find them at the supermarket (we found ours at Whole Foods).

I added a celery slices and stalk of rosemary in the soup while it was cooking. And then wilted some spinach leaves before serving.

This turned out so delicious. It was just what we needed that chilly evening.

Add some brown rice and it’s even better!

Here’s the recipe if you want to try it: Continue Reading

Is it really February? Last Monday I thought it was Friday. Time is warped; I could be talking to you from 2010 and I’ll be conscious of the correct year in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… But you do understand what I mean, right? Time zoomed forward.

A couple of weeks ago my ol’ friend visited Vancouver. We go back as far as our Geology freshmen days in 1995. It’s been a good 8 or 9 years since we last saw each other when we were fresh graduates and newly-licensed professionals. Now, we are old(er), relocated in North America, and cook and share recipes. I gave him the recipe for Food For The Gods, and he taught me how to make this Filipino dish called “Igado” (pronounced as ee-ga-DOH, as if you’re saying fa-la-LAH).

Igado is a regional Filipino delicacy with fatty pork loin meat and pork liver cooked with red bell pepper and peas, in a salty-sour sauce. I love this dish but never had the gumption to make it until my friend indulged me with their family’s Ilocano recipe. The Ilocanos are people from the northern part of the Philippines. In my home country, different regions have different traditional dishes with distinct tastes, but there’s one common characteristic about Filipino dishes — they try to make as much use of what’s available from the ingredients. Call it the Third-World Factor™, not Fodder For Fear Factor™. Take igado, for example, instead of throwing out the skin with fat, it is cubed and fried until crispy; and except for the excess oil, the whole pork loin is used.

Check out the crispy browned fat with skin:

I know it sounds absolutely horrible and will send nutritionists and dietitians screaming out the door, but these are SO good to eat even on their own [disclaimer: Enjoy at your own risk. Don't even think about eating the fried fat if you have heart, high blood, cholesterol or other health-related problems]. It’s used to flavor a lot of dishes, including boiled green mung beans. Eat in moderation, I always say.

Igado is an excellent make-head viand, just like Adobo. It tastes even better the day after, just make sure to keep it cold in the fridge and re-heat before serving. If you’re not into offal, you can skip the liver, but it wouldn’t taste the same. Perhaps you’ve been on the fence about finally trying liver and you’re just waiting for the recipe, consider making this.

The following recipe is not according to my friend’s specifications because he just estimated the amounts in his head when he made it. I took it upon myself, in the spirit of accuracy (whatever excuse I can make to cook this!), to re-create the dish while measuring everything for you and for our future reference. Enjoy! Continue Reading