I’m a big fan of food. I cook most of my meals so I get a lot of opportunity to experiment and expand my repertoire. Lately, I’ve been on a kick making food that I would usually get prepared from the store. It turns out that making a lot of prepared foodstuffs is actually pretty easy. Add the decreased cost (in the long run) and the ability to control the ingredients and do-it-yourself food becomes an obvious choice. Here’s a list of great and easy foods to make yourself that I’ve made recently.
Note: I’m not including yogurt on this list even though home-made yogurt is delicious. It’s just that I haven’t made it recently. Other easy and tasty home-made foodstuffs I haven’t made recently include jam and mayonnaise.
1. Pancakes – I was down in Charlottesville a few weeks back and stayed with my friends E____ and B____. They made some amazing breakfast one morning, punctuated with scratch pancakes. I got the recipe and dominated a later breakfast at home cause they’re so easy to make. Just google pancake recipes and you’ll see how easy it is – goodbye Bisquick!
2. Pickles – Well, this one was a bit of a failure because I ended up making bread and butter pickles… which I really don’t like. But it was so easy to make (just boil some vinegar and water and spices then pour over some cukes) that I’ll be making the salty kind of pickles soon enough. By the way… who wins in a throwdown between salt and sugar? I’ll put my money on salt but sugar has been really sneaky lately.
3. Honey Roasted Almonds – Alright, so this isn’t something I get too often but I noticed I had a lot of almonds lying around so I whipped together a quick and tasty snack. These are real addictive and not too good for you because of all the sugar involved.
4. Granola – Is granola the king of homemade food? I love the stuff. And the granola I make at home is so much better than any granola I’ve ever bought. It’s so simple too: Combine oats and nuts and whatever else with brown sugar, maple syrup and oil and bake for a bit. I find almonds to be a must in any granola but you can add whatever you want. My favorite combo so far has been almonds, hazelnuts, banana chips and coconut. I got knocked at work the other day because I was eating granola for breakfast and this retired sergeant major was wolfing down biscuits with sausage gravy and a whole bunch of other stuff… but damn I bet they’d all be singing a different tune if they’da had my granola.
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