Make your own muesli

For years and years and years I ate granola with yogurt for breakfast, and it never occurred to me to use anything other than pre-mixed granola. But all that changed about a year and a half ago, and since then I've been waking up nearly every morning and eating this:


What happened a year and a half ago that was so thunderously life-changing? I read Michael Pollan's essay (now a book) in the New York Times - "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto". That essay completely changed the way I thought about food. Actually, 'changed' may not be the best word here, because I simply hadn't thought about food, at least not in depth, before.

It's shocking - I mean, we eat food every day, it's all around us, and yet in American culture at least, nobody actually wants to think about food. We don't ask ourselves "What is it? Where did it come from? How did it end up in front of me? How many hands have touched this? How many machines have manipulated it?" But once you do start asking those questions, once you look at a package of cookies and no longer see them as "Chips Ahoy!" or "Oreos" or whatever they've been branded as, but as a mixture of flour, sugar, chemically treated oil from something - supposedly vegetables?, additives with names too long to pronounce or understand... once you think about how these things were made (what is a corporate cookie factory like anyway?) and how their production is affecting the economy, the environment, the general health of the population, your own health, etc., etc., welllll, it's enough to put you off processed food permanently! At least, it was enough to put me off processed food in the sense of corporation-generated, has ingredients I would never use even if I had access to them, and really doesn't even taste that great - sort of processed food.

Which brings me back to my muesli. I actually don't think pre-prepared granola is all that bad in the grand scheme of things. It generally doesn't have a lot of weird ingredients, it tastes pretty good, and you never really hear about "Big Granola" ruining the industries of small-time oat farmers.

But still. After I read the article, I decided to really clean up my act, and go completely un-processed wherever possible. To be fair, this wasn't all that difficult for me, since at that time I was living in Milan where I had access to a fantastic open-air market and delicious fresh ingredients year-round. But I did make whatever changes I could. Instead of having crackers as a before-dinner snack when I got hungry, I switched to carrots; when possible I made my own tomato sauce instead of using the bottled kind; and I stopped buying pre-packaged granola and flavored yogurt and started making my own muesli mixes with plain and simple whole-milk yogurt.

The best part about making your own muesli is that you can change it every single day. Buy a bunch of stock items (nuts, seeds, dried & fresh fruits), and then just put in whatever you feel like each morning. After extensive experimentation, I have pretty much settled on a favorite mixture, which I'll give below, but I encourage you to play around with your muesli and see what you like best. Admittedly, it's slightly more time-consuming than just dumping a package of granola into a bowl in the morning, but it's also more fun, and it gives you just a little bit more control.


Ingredients:
About 100 g. of plain yogurt
A generous handful of oats
A small handful of linseeds (also called flaxseeds)
A small handful of sunflower seeds
A few almonds
1 banana
In summer: a handful of fresh blueberries and/or raspberries
In winter: a handful of raisins or dried cherries or dried strawberries
In any season: a couple dried apricots or other dried fruit of your choosing

Slice the banana, wash the berries if applicable, and cut up any dried fruit that's bigger than a button (dried apricots, peaches, apples, kiwis, mangos...). Combine all ingredients together, mix well, and eat!

A few notes:
1. I don't generally put in all the fruits I mentioned here - usually I just pick one or two, but I wanted to mention all my favorites!
2. To make this more like granola, you could toast the oats with some honey, brown sugar, canola oil, etc. beforehand. I actually like them plain, but if you prefer yours a bit sweeter, then you can prepare a big batch of oats like this and then just use those each morning.

Zucchini herb yogurt cake

I have been suffering from a surfeit of zucchini lately. Not from eating too much zucchini, just from having too many zucchini and not knowing what to do with them!


Ever since the zucchini started appearing at the markets, I can't keep my hands off them. I've been buying 2 or 3 a week, which may not seem like a lot, but for one person who already has plenty of other food at home, it certainly adds up.

And of course, I can't make the same zucchini dish over and over again, so I've had to keep coming up with new ways of using the little guys! I've made zucchini fritters, zucchini sautéed with pasta, zucchini baked with pasta, zucchini stuffed with feta, zucchini stuffed with lamb - just about the only thing I haven't made is zucchini ice cream. An interesting idea actually, but that will be for another day...

This cake started out in my mind as a set of zucchini herb muffins. Upon realizing I didn't have any muffin tins, I had to change course. After mulling over various possibilities, I decided that a savory cake - a sort of cross between zucchini bread and a zucchini quiche - would be a nice thing to try and a good way to use up both some zucchini and some of my fresh herbs, of which I also buy wayyyy too many (the bottom shelf of my refrigerator is currently stuffed full of basil, mint, dill, sage, and thyme which I'm sure will all dry out before I can ever use them up).

Considering the number of things I make that don't turn out at all the way I had envisioned them, this cake came shockingly close to what I had planned. Light, fresh, and very herby, it's a great summertime snack or appetizer.

Ingredients:
2 small zucchini or 1 very large one
2 or 3 scallions (green onions)
A large bunch of fresh dill
A large bunch of fresh mint
125 g. all-purpose flour
A small spoonful of baking soda
A smaller spoonful of salt
125 g. yogurt
50 g. kasseri cheese (a Greek/Turkish cheese made from unpasteurized sheep's milk. If you can't find any, substitute with a semi-hard cheese of your choosing, but I think the flavor of kasseri is perfect for this cake - a stronger cheese would be overwhelming)
A few spoonfuls of olive oil

Preheat the oven to 160º C / 355º F. Wash the zucchini, trim the ends, and chop them into thin rondelles. Wash the scallions and chop them finely. Heat a large sauté pan, add olive oil, and then add the zucchini and the scallions. Let cook on medium heat about 10 minutes, until zucchini are tender. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.


Wash the mint and dill and chop them up very finely. In a large bowl, sift together the flour with the baking soda and salt.

Grease a cake pan with olive oil. You could also use a loaf pan, to make the cake appear more bread-like - whatever you have available should be fine.

Lightly beat the eggs, and grate the cheese into the eggs. Working rather quickly, add the zucchini & scallions, the yogurt, the herbs, the eggs, the cheese, and the olive oil into the flour mixture. Mix together with a spoon just until the ingredients are combined. Immediately pour into the cake pan and place in the oven.

Let bake about 15 minutes, until a fork inserted in the cake comes out clean. Let cool and serve at room temperature, or refrigerate until serving later.

Cucumber Yogurt Salad

I was a very picky eater as a kid, which made meal preparation a rather tricky task for my parents, especially considering that my brother, who was generally pretty accepting of various foods, absolutely refused to eat cheese (which was one of the few foods I would eat of course). However, whenever my mom made this salad, my brother and I would both happily eat it all up and even ask for seconds!


I tried to make it once in Italy, and this led to my discovery of the fact that nobody in Italy seems to know what dill is, nor can it be found in any major supermarkets or open-air markets. I finally managed to track down a jar at a strange foreign foods/health foods store that I came across completely by chance while wandering down a street near the Navigli district. That jar, with it's labeling of 'Aneto' is the one I still have and use, though of course if you have access to fresh dill then you should definitely use that!

Ingredients (makes enough for 1 large dish or for 2 people to split as a side to other dishes):
1 medium cucumber
250 g plain yogurt
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Salt
Mint
Dill
A spring of parsley

Wash the cucumber and peel if necessary (depends on the variety of cucumber). Chop lengthwise and then chop each half into thin slices. Combine cucumber and yogurt in a bowl. Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice and then add a pinch of salt, the mint, and the dill. Mix everything well. Wash the parsley and chop it into little bits. Sprinkle the parsley over the salad and serve immediately or let chill a bit and then serve.

I added some Israeli/Levantine couscous to my salad to round out the meal, but the salad also works well as an accompaniment to heartier dishes, particularly when they are spicy!