Baked Oatmeal

In keeping with easy recipes, I wanted to share this incredibly easy and healthy recipe for baked oatmeal. It's compliments of my dear friend Kristi.  It's a great breakfast or snack.

Here's the recipe:

BAKED OATMEAL
     1/2 cup applesauce                                2 eggs beaten
     1 cup honey/sugar                                  3 cups quick oatmeal
     2 teaspoons baking powder                    1 teaspoon salt
     1 cup milk

     Combine applesauce,eggs and sugar.  Add oatmeal, baking powder, salt and milk. Add anything you want, from berries to nuts to raisins to flax seed or wheat germ.  Anything goes!  Bake  at 350 for 30 minutes or until done.

my before pic of the batter:

 and after:

and on my fork (with a little cilantro leaf in the background, no less):

yummy, healthy, easy and cheap (I had all the ingredients on hand!)

Pear and Goat Cheese Tart

People, I haven't made anything this good in a long time. Do you have two hours to spare? How about $20? That's what I spent on this tart. So perhaps it's not exactly economical.... but sometimes you want to make something expensive and fabulous. This tart is both.

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cups of whole almonds
• Honey
• Olive Oil
• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 large egg
• 12 sheets of frozen phyllo dough, thawed
• 5 ounces of goat cheese
• 2 green Anjou pears, thinly sliced
• Fresh spinach leaves
• Salt. (Duh.)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Put the almonds and a touch of honey in the food processor. Whirl away until they are finely ground.
3. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons of olive oil, the egg, vanilla, and 1/8 teaspoon of salt. Process until well-combined.
4. Remove the mixture to a bowl and mix in the goat cheese. Set aside.
5. Arrange one phyllo sheet on a cutting board, (making sure to cover the rest of the phyllo with a dish towel to keept hem from drying out). Carefully brush the sheet with olive oil. Top it with another phyllo sheet. Gently brush the second sheet with olive oil, too. Fold the sheets in half like a book. Loosely fold the edges of the phyllo up towards the center to create a little boat of sorts. You want it to be about 4 inches in diameter... but the world is your oyster. Make it however big you want. Set your little boat on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat this process until you have six tart shells.
6.  Place a large dollop of the goat cheese and almond mixture in the center of your tart shell. Spread it out. Top it with some pear slices. Drizzle just a tiny bit of honey over the pears.
7. Bake the tarts for 20-23 minutes until golden brown.
8. Meanwhile, saute your spinach in a pan until wilted.
9. Take your tarts out of the oven, top them with the spinach, and EAT.

***NOTE: I think it would save soooo much time if you just sprayed the phyllo with cooking spray rather than spending all that time carefully brushing it with olive oil. Try it and let me know how it goes.

This makes six tarts. I ate two for dinner. Serve as a main dish or as a side.

(This savory tart was very much inspired by this sweet recipe from Cooking Light. I changed a few key ingredients, omitted some things, and added some others. But still, they should get the credit.)

Cooking Therapy

This has been a really tough week at work. I'm usually pretty good about leaving my emotions at the office after a really long day, but sometimes being a social worker just isn't that easy! It certainly wasn't easy this week.

There are a few important concepts that you learn about in social work grad school: "Compassion Fatigue" describes a state of emotional exhaustion related to your work caring for others. "Self Care" is an important practice that you implement in order to prevent compassion fatigue. This week I was feeling some serious compassion fatigue and in dire need of self care.

I had this amazing professor in grad school who taught me about the importance of taking care of myself, about how I am actually a better social worker/wife/daughter/sister/friend when I am not neglecting my needs. In her book "The Gifts of Imperfection" she talks about the importance of cultivating creativity as a way to feed our souls.

"Creativity, which is the expression of our originality, helps us stay mindful that what we bring to the world is completely original and cannot be compared" (Brene Brown, pg. 97).

Talking to Meredith on the phone as I drove home from work, I told her that I was going to give myself a little "cooking therapy" in order to help work through the craziness of the week. Cooking is one way I express my creativity, and thus feed my soul. It's a therapeutic process: when I'm cooking, I go into a zone and block the rest of the world out. I'm so consumed with the combination of flavors, textures, and colors, with the creation of something new, beautiful, and good, that the cares of the day melt away and I feel restored.

Tonight I spent close to 2.5 hours making a pear and goat cheese tart. It was good and my heart is happy.

Creativity can take many forms: art, music, crafts, photography, blogging.... we all have different gifts and passions. Find yours and discover the gift of creating.

(I highly encourage anyone who is interested to look up Brene Brown and further investigate her work by clicking on the above links.)