It's Tuesday?

So, Taneasha tells me that today is Tuesday and I was supposed to have some kind of post up. Um. Really? Okay.

Huh.

Um.

Well, I've had a houseguest for the last week or so, and it's "Reading Week" (aka midwinter break so university students won't kill themselves) so I've kinda lost track of a few things. Not the least of which is half my socks. Seriously, I've been wearing mismatches for the last few days because I seem to only have singles.

Fortunately, I have Recipe Guy handy. And he's good for more than just smart assed comments in the comments section.

Over the past summer Texas had one hell of a drought. Recipe Guy lost nearly his entire garden and had almost completely given up on home grown fresh veggies when he noticed something growing that he hadn't planted.

Looks kinda like a green bean, doesn't it?

Well, it kinda is.

Strophostyles helvola is a wild bean native to the southern US, and actually edible. Apparently these extremely drought tolerant plants were able to find a niche in his garden where everything else had died of sunstroke and heat exhaustion.

After a whole bunch of research and some test beans (Recipe Guy geeking out on food? who him? never. lol)

he harvested a bunch of them, parboiled and froze them.

Oops. Resized an already resized picture.

I know a few of you freaked out a bit when we harvested wild onions for our bread pudding, but really, there is food everywhere if you know where to look. We've also picked wild berries on the side of the road, culled rose hips from wild rose plants, scoped out wild grapes and chantrelle mushrooms; and when I was on the island I harvested wild chamomile almost daily.

I don't know about you, but when the zombie apocalypse happens, I'm going to be well fed, and it won't be with freeze dried army rations. 

The green beans froze quite well. We tossed them into a stir fry with some pea pods and pork.

Since it was his first harvest, a few of them had made it past their prime and were a bit stringy, but overall, they were just like the green beans you get at the grocery.

What have you eaten wild?

Getting it out of my system

Last peanut butter recipe for a while, I promise. Unless Taneasha makes jelly, then all bets are off.

I get regular requests for peanut butter cookies and for oatmeal cookies, and I finally decided to give in and make the boys what they want. Now, I’m not a fan of either, but they are popular cookies so I guess most people don’t mind having things that belong at breakfast for dessert.

And even though it’s cooled off a bit lately, I have been thinking lots about the no bake sort of cookie. My mom used to make something that she called “macaroons” as her usual no bake treat. I’ve since learned that this is a Canadian name for what most people call Haystacks, and what other people call macaroons are not what I call macaroons, though both contain coconut.

Anyway.

I decided to kill two birds with one stone, and save myself having to make one or the other at a later date. Less painful for me, and the boys at work get what they want. Happiness abounds.

No Bake Peanut Butter Cookies

What you need:

• 2 c sugar
• ¾ c milk
• ¾ c butter
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 ½ c peanut butter
• 3 c quick cooking oats
• 1 ½ c rice crispies (gotta love the individual serving size... too bad my kid doesn't)

What you gotta do:

So, I used the Teddy Bear peanut butter (and I can almost see Taneasha cringing at seeing it again) which is a fairly sweet one. If you use an all natural, peanuts only one, you might want to increase your sugar a bit, maybe to 2 ½ cups.

In a good sized pot (bigger than you think you’ll need) combine the sugar, milk and butter over medium heat.

While that heats, measure out your peanut butter into a large metal or glass bowl. Something heatproof.

Keep an eye on your pot o’ milk. This will boil eventually, even on medium. Stir it as it’s heating though, you don’t want it stuck to the bottom of the pan.

Mine looked a little bit curdle-y just as it was starting to boil,

but that disappeared once the boil was good and rolling. And by rolling, I mean it won’t stop or fall if you stir it.

When it gets to that point, just set the spoon aside and set your timer for 2 minutes.

It will rise up a bit as it boils. This is why you need a bigger than you think you need pot. You really really don’t want this boiling over onto your stove.

This is the beginnings of a creamy caramel. Butter, milk and sugar. Freaking tasty.

After your two minutes are up, slowly pour the almost caramel over the peanut butter

And add a dribble of vanilla. Yes, I know I seem to have reverted to just eyeballing ingredient amounts. At least I gave you a volume in the ingredient list. Feel free to actually measure, if you want to.

Once again, stirring stuff into peanut butter looks weird at first,

But eventually it all comes together.

Dump in your oats and cereal.

And start stirring.

I left out the third cup of oats and started with 2 cups of oats and all the cereal; it’s better to have to add dry ingredients than to try to figure out how to hydrate a dry cookie batter (Is this batter? Dough? What exactly is in my bowl??)

Eventually though, I did add the last cup.

That brought the consistency to something I was confident would hold some kind of shape if I dropped it by blobs onto paper.

If you’re not sure of yours, drop a spoonful onto paper. It should mostly hold its shape and not spread too much.

If it’s good, keep blobbing.

And blobbing.

And then add more paper at the end so you can get the last of the blobs out of the bowl.

Build yourself a rag tag army of blobs.

69 of them in fact. Don't believe me? Count 'em.

They need a bit of time to set. And fridging them will definitely help with that process. Just make sure you don’t put them all on one big sheet of parchment if you think you may need to relocate them.

These are gooey and sticky and caramelly in texture, and since they contain peanut butter, oatmeal, milk, and rice crispies, they make for a perfect breakfast cookie.

What's your favourite breakfast cookie??