This weekend, I happened to have a big gallon baggie of fresh blueberries in the fridge, shamelessly stolen from work. The fresh fruit that my preschoolers don’t eat often goes in the trash, so I’ve gotten in the habit of bagging it up and taking it home, either throwing it in the compost bin, sprinkling it out by the bushes for the rabbits and birds, or in this case, making delicious muffins!
I used this recipe from Once Upon a Chef. I made a few changes, including using Earth Balance instead of butter (as always), using rice milk instead of cow’s milk, omitting the almond extract because I didn’t have any, using regular sugar instead of turbinado for the crunchy topping, and overfilling my muffin tin to the very top to create GINORMO muffins (recipe says it’ll make a dozen, overfilling makes 6). I rarely use eggs in anything, including in baking (my cookies never have eggs) but when I do, I’ll only use certified humane eggs. Vital Farms is what I used this time.
These muffins were perfect. They were like the quintessential blueberry muffin–soft and warm, not cakey or dry, and overflowing with fresh ripe blueberries. Definitely my new base recipe for any future muffintimes!
I’m one of those weird yogurt people. The kind you stand behind in the check-out aisle who loads like 20 different brands and flavors of yogurts onto the conveyer belt and taps the lid one last time to make sure they’re not buying a dud. I am obsessed with my sour, bacteria-laden, fruity cultured dairy. Greek yogurt is my favorite, and I’ve tried them all.
Let me say that again.
I have tried them all. I don’t mean that casually. I’d rather not think about the amount of money I’ve spent sampling new yogurts as they come out. Fage really is the best, with local producer Hiland Dairy, a very American “greek” yogurt coming in second. The big thing to look for is corn starch used as a thickening shortcut instead of straining it the traditional way. Corn starch in Greek yogurt leaves a chalky feeling in your mouth. Yuck.
Anyway! Today I could not contain my excitement when I happened upon a new product–Stonyfield Petite Crème. Imma be rilllllll honest and say that the packaging sucked me in. Black and white with pretty scrolly things and French lettering isn’t exactly the industry standard in yogurt branding. Then I read the cup, and this product, in amongst the yogurt, denied its yogurtness over and over on different areas of the packaging. It claims instead to be a “cheese”, and according to the ingredients, there are no traditional yogurt bacteria, like L. acidophilus, to be found. Instead this “crème” uses more subtle cheese cultures. Intrigued, I shelled out the outrageous $2.29 (there’s almost always good Greek yogurt on sale for $1 a cup) and took it home.
This stuff is confusingly good. It’s tangy like Greek yogurt, but I’m not tasting yogurt in my mouth for 10 minutes afterwards. It leaves no aftertaste. It’s tangy, but not sour. Not overly sweet. The fruit isn’t out of place like I sometimes feel with Greek yogurt. It tastes…pretty. If this yogurt crème were a person, it’d be Vanessa Paradis in a red lip. My yogurt sensibilities will never be the same! Yogurt without the cultures? S’il vous plait!
If you were to tell my 7 year old self that someday I would be obsessed with pickles, 7 year old me would be very disappointed. As a child I was proud of my pickle hatred, scoffing in the face of my pickle loving friends, with a special abhorrence for the weirdest of weirdos, the pickle juice drinkers. HORK!
But then one fateful night in my mid-20s, sitting with friends having a beer at the Dundee Dell, the words “Fried Pickles” floated up from the menu and smacked me in the face. Possessed by some unknown force (read: beer), I ordered them. I ate one, and I was a pickle convert on the spot.
The fried pickles at the Dundee Dell aren’t all that special to be honest, but it was the first time I could ever tolerate those briny green “vegetables”, and from that day forward I was a pickle-o-holic. Fried pickles introduced me to regular pickles, which further fueled my fire for the fried ones. I get them anytime they’re on the menu. Inexplicably, the best fried pickles I’ve ever had were at a comedy club in town called the Funny Bone. Big, juicy dills, warm hot batter, but still a little cold on the inside of the pickle itself. Delicious.
I think fried pickles are best with spears. Halves are too massive and chips get too soggy, and without the double crunch (first from the batter and second from the pickle) they lose some of their appeal. So, a few months ago when I set out to make my own, crunch is what I had in mind. I used Claussen dill spears, which are extremely crunchy, and Panko bread crumbs, infamous for their crunch. I used an old vegan fry trick by making a paste of flour and water for the first dredging (as opposed to buttermilk or an egg dip), then dredging the spears in Panko after. I really cannot emphasize the amount of crunch these have. If you are a lifetime pickle lover, or maybe a convert like me, but have yet to try fried pickles, cooooooome to the green side.
Panko Fried Pickles
Ingredients
Directions
In a medium saucepan, heat the canola oil to 375 degrees using a kitchen thermometer. In a medium size bowl, mix the Panko, salt, garlic powder, and pepper. In another medium size bowl, add the flour and enough water to make a thin paste. Dredge pickle spears first in flour paste, letting the excess drip off. Next, coat the pickles in the Panko. I actually like leaving the excess Panko on because I like the fried pickles to be super crunchy. Fry in batches (to maintain oil temp) 2-3 minutes on each side until golden brown. Place fried pickles on a paper towel to drain excess oil. Serve warm, preferably with copious amounts of ranch. 🙂
I’m a preschool teacher to 21 truly insane individuals. They’re all out of their minds in their own special ways, and it is my job to help guide them through this post-toddler consciousness so that hopefully they come out the other side as compassionate, educated, fresh-faced little conflict resolvers.
Because our school is a NAEYC accredited center, we create our lesson plans using emergent curriculum–or basing our projects on the interests of the children. The theory is that if you teach what the children are naturally drawn towards, the learning will be that much more effective.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to talk a child off a ledge when a bee flew by. They come up to me running and screaming and flailing about, then I’m forced to utter that famous childhood mantra, “Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you.” I usually throw in something about Ferdinand, too. But no matter how many times I promised the kids the bees weren’t going to hurt them, they were still consistently terrified. So, I figured I’d teach them about bees–what they do, how they do it, what their babies look like, that there’s a queen(!)–and hoped their fears would lessen. And whodathunk, it worked! Instead of, “OMG A BEE,” it was, “Look, Ms. Emily, the bee wants pollen!”
This is one of the projects we did during our several-week long unit on honey bees. It’s a life-sized beehive with larva (cut up white straws curled up in the honeycomb), anatomically correct drawings of adult bees, a queen (she’s in the hive, wearing a crown, naturally), pollen packed into the cells (the orange circles), and honey (the yellow cellophane). As we learned about each of these things, we added it to our hive. We even had a local honey producer give us a chunk of real honeycomb for the kids to study.
To finish our unit, I thought it’d be a cool to do some cooking with honey. It was amazing how the kids had a whole new appreciation for honey compared to when we started. Half of them bring granola bars for breakfast, so I thought I could teach them how to make their own, and honey lends itself perfectly to that. We used this recipe, doubling it and subbing out the peanut butter for Nutella. The kids did all the work while I sat around and supervised to make sure there were actually M&M’s left for the recipe at the end, since they snuck them every chance they got. The granola was truly delicious. Thanks, bees!
The Portly Vegetarian 
