oats

Blueberry Oatmeal Quick Bread

This incredibly easy blueberry bread (it takes just 10 minutes to mix!) gets an added dose of healthy with the addition of Greek yogurt and oats, making it an even better option than banana bread or blueberry muffins, too.

This quick bread recipe is a favorite I originally shared back in 2013. Lately I’ve been making it over and over again—it’s that perfect food gift for welcoming the new baby (hello baby Max!) or saying hello to new neighbors. So while I was at it, I took new photos to share again here.

This recipe came about after standing at the kitchen counter one day with a half dozen super ripe bananas, swatting my husband’s headed-to-the-garbage-can-hands in an attempt to quell their discarded fate.

I knew by the super sweet smell and the mooshy touch—not to mention Smudge’s squinched up expression each time she passed them by thanks to their rather unattractive state—that I’d be lucky to squeeze even one more day in before my opportunity to make banana bread would be gone. And just like that, it was.

That’s when blueberries came to my quick bread rescue, for a quick bread worthy of any breakfast, brunch, or treat.continue to the recipe… about Blueberry Oatmeal Quick Bread

No-Bake Cookie Bars with Chocolate, Cherries and Chia Seeds

I’m shortening this recipe title to be known as Triple CH No-Bake Cookie Bars, making it easy to remember the main ingredient list thanks to it’s title: chocolate, cherries and chia that create a healthy cookie bar for breakfast, snacking, or even dessert.

If a photo could sway a viewer into diving into a style of eating they don’t necessarily need to follow, Alanna Taylor-Tobin of the food blog The Bojon Gourmet will likely be the one to create it. That’s exactly how I first became a fan of Alanna’s and the blog she started during a stint of what she calls “funemployment”, including the word bojon in her blog name—a term that’s backward for “no job”.

Through her sumptuously styled photography and original gluten-free recipes, Alanna’s talents as a classically trained pastry chef inspire thousands to live a gluten-free lifestyle and still cure their sweet tooth.continue to the recipe… about No-Bake Cookie Bars with Chocolate, Cherries and Chia Seeds

Cherry Berry and Banana Overnight Oats

Oats, cherries, berries and banana soak in almond milk overnight in the refrigerator to create a no-cook red, white and blue layered, healthy on-the-go breakfast in a jar.

This year I’m partnering with Blue Diamond Almond Breeze to share healthful recipes made with almond milk, like these easy, no-cook overnight oats that will help you serve up your best.

This summer our days have been jam-packed. No lazy days of summer here. She’s been a busy 12 year old with one camp or another almost every week this summer.

Golf camp. Soccer camp. And to continue carrying on my sport-loving legacy, she had her first volleyball camp too.

continue to the recipe… about Cherry Berry and Banana Overnight Oats

The Best Banana Bread Pancakes

These easy and fluffy buttermilk pancakes taste just like banana bread, thanks to a simple mashing of banana into pancake mix, warm spices, and healthy additions like old-fashioned oats and chopped pecans.

These pancakes have a few secrets going on. Secrets that pancake purists should probably just ignore. But they’ll come around, and will totally be asking for just one more flapjack. That’s just the way it goes.

These pancakes are a mash-up. Oh, did I really just say that? Yes, a forcefully forked mash-up of super ripe bananas, pancake mix, nuts, buttermilk and spices whose smell as the cakes cook conjure up cravings for fresh baked banana bread.

But hold on tight, I haven’t even hit the secrets that lie in them there hot cakes.continue to the recipe… about The Best Banana Bread Pancakes

Currant Cookies and a Cookie Cravings eCookbook Flash Sale

Friendship is a funny thing.

You can be the best of friends. Totally inseparable for weeks, months, even years. Then life changes. New friends come into your life, old friends drift away. Often it’s not even a conscious decision, thought or action. It just happens.

I was first introduced to these Currant Cookies thanks to a friendship I’ve known all of my life, a friendship of my mother’s that has been passed down to the next generation. Life comes full circle and somehow these cookies have become a part of it.

Back a few more years than I’d care to have on my calendar, my mom was set to deliver my little sister when she met her best friend Pam. My mom and Pam were both in the same hospital about to give birth to daughters. For years they had run in similar circles, in the same city, but hadn’t met one another. Yet people would always mistake them for one another. Similar mannerisms, style, beauty and height. It was a wonder they hadn’t met before. I guess bringing their daughters into the world at the same time made it their time.

They both named their daughters Holly. Well, my mom didn’t initially. I did that. My mom and dad named her Heather, but I refused to call her anything but Holly. My mom said she never did look like a Heather. She said Heather’s are wispy. Holly was a tub. So at 4 months old, Holly had a name change.

I’ve always been a bossy older sister. I blame it on this first act of self righteousness.

continue to the recipe… about Currant Cookies and a Cookie Cravings eCookbook Flash Sale

Baked Orange French Toast with Almond Crumble

I have a friend who abhors anything citrus. The smell alone puts her into a tailspin and the gag reflexes start. Peeling an orange in the same office with her was always a sensitive affair, but being the ever polite and gracious co-worker she would simply step out and never complain when any one of us would forget about her unfortunate dislike.

I feel sad for her. Citrus is so good! Thank goodness we’ve both moved onto new jobs where inconsiderate co-workers are a thing of the past.

Smudge is obsessed with clementines, and she will argue with me, “Moooom, they’re called “Cuties” not clemmmmentinnnnes.” She doesn’t quite get the branding thing yet. And that’s perfectly fine with me. As long as she’s getting her vitamin C and eating oranges.

So when I was noodling around thinking of recipes where I could add some orange flavor, one of my favorite dishes made its way to the front and center. French toast made easy: baked in the oven.continue to the recipe… about Baked Orange French Toast with Almond Crumble