Living in a Cereal World

Why do cranberries and oranges work so well together? You would think, tart on top of tart? Nah. More like, yeah, sweet-tart. If Kellogg's was smart they'd make a Raisin Bran with orange-soaked dried cranberries. And now that I've tied this into cereal, here's these  Cranberry Orange Scones . I still have holiday cranberries in the freezer and I felt like making scones, so, there you go. Why this recipe? Most importantly, I needed a cranberry scone recipe that didn't call for heavy cream. Buttermilk optional; in this case, milk was even better. I didn't want to get stuck with buttermilk, either. For maximum orange-iness, don't skip the glaze! I did skip the dusting with sugar because I didn't think both sugar toppings were necessary. One thing I would've done differently is flatten my dough disk out a little bit more (as opposed to stopping at a 7-inch round). Some of my scones were larger than others and didn't quite get baked all the wa

Do you ever wake up in the morning and say to yourself, "You know what I want for breakfast? Beans ." Yeah, me neither. Don't get me wrong, if it's part of a recipe for breakfast burritos or something, I'm not going to pick the beans out. I'm just saying I've never had a taste for a big bowl of beans in the a.m. But then Wegmans (no apostrophe!) had to go and create a new line of cereals with beans and lentils, so of course I had to try it. I decided to start with the Vanilla O's since that's not a flavor in the Cheerios line right now (that's a good idea, though). First off, although the bean flours are the first ingredient(s), you should know there's also oat and rice flours; I would think they'd give the finished product a little more bulk, more heft. Starting with the sniff test, of course: a good, natural vanilla scent. Then an examination of the O's themselves--a little flat, and larger than Cheerios. It reminded me of th

I've been holding on to this box for weeks and I finally went ahead and opened it. So let me start by saying 👏 you did it again, Honey Bunches of Oats. As much as I enjoyed the  Banana Bunches last Fall, this is...well, let me find the words. This is a blog, after all 😉. As soon as I opened the box I was hit by apples and caramel (figuratively speaking, of course). That would be a good predictor for the taste test. A momentary disappointment, however: the bag looked to be about half full. I know, contents may shift or whatever during shipping, but I'm pretty sure they aren't supposed to dissipate. I was glad I managed to get this on sale for $1.99. Ok, but back to the cereal: it smelled like a caramel apple pie, but how would it taste? The bits--well, slightly larger than bits--of freeze-dried apple have a crunch to them at first, followed by a nice chew. Not too gummy.  And the oat bunches are all caramel flavor without the stickiness. I don't really want to tan

Not mine, of course. You know I always  do something for my mom for  her birthday . This year I combined two of her favorites--a peach-blueberry combo and icing-less cake--to make a  Peach and Blueberry Upside Down Cake (you can probably guess I just substituted blueberries for the raspberries). Mom ate hers with whipped cream; I ate mine unadorned. It really doesn't need anything extra--that's how good it is. 😋 I failed to take a picture because my peach placement wasn't nearly as photogenic as Erin's. Also I had waaay too many blueberries. A strong hint: if you make this cake, arrange the peach slices first , then scatter your berries. Two other things my mom loves: gingerbread and buttermilk pancakes. She claims she wasn't ever a big fan of pancakes until I started making recipes with buttermilk. I guess she just Aunt Jemima'd us to death in our childhoods. So I found this  Gingerbread Pancakes recipe that called for just the amount of buttermilk I h