Rochester Arts & Apples

On Friday my husband had a late meeting, so at the last minute I packed the kids up and headed downtown to the arts and apples festival at Rochester Municipal Park. We had a BLAST.

There was a kid's section that had free crafts and music for the kids. Because we were there on the first day and the clouds were looking kind of threatening, there were no lines at any of the activity tents. The weather was also cool enough that we didn't get too hot. I had only planned on going for an hour, but we were having so much fun, we were still there at 6:30 when my husband's meeting ended so he came and met us. After he met us, we walked around a little more and then went to watch Deborah's Stage Door perform. I was impressed by how good they were, but the conservative mother in me wouldn't want my daughter prancing around in those postage stamps costumes, but maybe I am just a prude.

Bean, Tomato & Caper Salad

Bean, Tomato & Caper Salad, originally uploaded by HiMalta.

Just finished making some bean and tomato salad from the Basic Italian cookbook. Everyone I make this for really likes it.

Pasta Salad

Pasta Salad Toppings, originally uploaded by HiMalta.

At 1PM today I looked in my cupboard and wondered what I was going to make for dinner. I saw some tri-colored pasta and "Pasta Salad" seemed to be the only way to go. My Pasta salad is NEVER the same. What it tastes like depends on what I have in the fridge/pantry. Here is what I came up with today.

The pasta is underneath. Today I included:
* 1 red pepper chopped
* 4 generous teaspoons of capers
* 1 can of chick peas
* 2 hard boiled eggs
* 1/4 block of Colby cheese cubed
* 4 green onions
* 1/5 purple onion
* 1 zesty Italian seasoning packet
* some fresh chopped parsley
* 1 pepperoni chopped
* 2 boxes of pasta
* olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt & pepper to taste

Before serving I always add some fresh chopped tomatoes.

What I wanted to add, but didn't have on hand were some black olives. It still tasted great, but I think they would have given it a nice kick.

Homemade Granola Bars

Tried this recipe for Homemade Granola Bars.

The taste was AWESOME! But I couldn't get the bars to cut right without falling apart. I am not used to having things not turn out for me, even when I alter the recipe on the first attempt like I did. I made a couple of changes to the recipe which I will detail below, but I think my real problem was that I didn't chop the Almonds enough before putting them in. Next time I want to make them, I will used slivered almonds instead.

I also made the following modifications:

• I used caster sugar because I couldn't find the sticky bun sugar. I think this is a contributing factor to the cut failure. The recipe says it should be bubbly, but mine never got bubbly.
• Instead of Oat flour, I used half oat bran and half wheat germ
• I used three cups of fillers: dried cranberries, coconut, almonds, pepitas and peanuts.

Next time I plan on following the recipe exactly, but after that I already have an idea for a modification. If you have ever had the Nature Valley crunch PB granola bars, the top has a super thin layer of Peanut Butter on them. I will try this in a future attempt and let you know how it goes.