1) crumb: noun, a small fragment especially of something baked (as bread)

Wow, it's been a very busy weekend here. Hubby and I are hosting my cousin, his wife and their three wonderful and totally adorable boys (one 8 year old and a set of 6 year old twins!) while they tour Washington, DC for the first time. They've been here since Friday night and I've been cooking up some of my favorite dishes for them to try. Feeding seven people for five days is a great way to use up my remaining bread products - which is one of my goals as Passover steadily approaches. After they leave tomorrow, I will do a major clean up of my pantry (I'm talking industrial strength elbow grease) and make sure I wipe up every last non-Passover friendly crumb. It will be a Herculean task, I'm afraid, because I haven't been keeping it very tidy lately.


Speaking of crumbs, I've baked for my guests and sadly I don't have a picture of my efforts to show you.However, Eating Well magazine's Zucchini Bread and Cooking Light's Oatmeal, Pecan & Chocolate Chip Cookies were so tasty, that my hubby rated them high enough to share.

(Funny story: last week I made a salmon asparagus risotto that my hubby deemed good, but not "blog worthy." Yes, he enjoys the good life, doesn't he?)

Zucchini Bread from Eating Well magazine

1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup pecan halves
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 cups packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 large egg whites
3/4 cup apple butter
1/3 cup canola oil
3 cups shredded zucchini (about 2 small zucchini)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Coat two 9-by-5-inch loaf pans cooking spray. Spread oats and pecans on separate parts of a baking sheet and bake until lightly toasted, 5 to 10 minutes; let cool. Chop the pecans. Stir together all but 2 tablespoons of the toasted oats, the pecans, white and whole-wheat flours, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt in a mixing bowl. Whisk together brown sugar, eggs, egg whites, apple butter and oil in another bowl; stir in zucchini. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients just until well combined. Divide the batter between the prepared loaf pans, smoothing the tops. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of the reserved oats on top of each loaf. Bake until the tops feel firm when lightly pressed and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean, 45 to 55 minutes. Let the loaves cool in the pans for 5 minutes; turn them out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

• This is the first time I've seen apple butter as a substitute for oil. Usually, recipes call for applesauce in it's place. I just happened to have three jars of apple butter handy (dropped off on my doorstep by ambitious realtors!)
• Hubby and I enjoyed one loaf early last week and froze the second loaf for our visitors. I just double wrapped it in foil and put it into a large freezer bag. When I needed it, I warmed it up in the microwave for 1 minute. It was as tasty as the first loaf.
• When I reached for the brown sugar, I found it to be brick-like. I recently heard of a novel way to soften it. Apparently, putting a slice of bread in the bag with the sugar does the trick. Has anyone else tried this successfully?

Oatmeal, Pecan & Chocolate Chip Cookies, by Cooking Light

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (about 5 1/2 ounces)

1 cup regular oats

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/3 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 large egg

1/4 cup chopped pecans, toasted

1/4 cup semisweet chocolate minichips

Preheat oven to 350°. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour and next 4 ingredients (through salt), stirring with a whisk; set aside. Place sugars and butter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended. Add vanilla and egg; beat until blended. Gradually add flour mixture, beating at low speed just until combined. Stir in pecans and minichips. Drop dough by tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake at 350° for 12 minutes or until edges of cookies are lightly browned. Cool on pans 2 minutes. Remove cookies from pans; cool on wire racks.

• To quote my younger self (straight from Jersey): Oh. My. God. These cookies are totally awesome.
• The dough can easily be rolled into a log, wrapped in plastic, and saved for a later date. I'm stealing a page from the Small Batch baking playbook by only making a small amount of cookies at one time.

On a completely different note, if you happen to live in the DC area and don't mind laughing until milk comes shooting out your nose, then stop by the DC Improv (www.dcimprov.com) tomorrow night - Tuesday April 15 at 8:30pm. I'm performing in the monthly DC Improv Comedy School cast show. It's the 5th anniversary show- well over 200 cast members have graced the stage. Tomorrow, I'll be one of 15 cast members. We had an all day rehearsal yesterday, and I'm honored to be part of this incredibly talented cast. Hope to see you!

See if you can eat just one

I'm trying something new and I'm eager to hear what you think. I thought it might be fun to create a recipe card for you to click, print and put right into your recipe box. The size is 4 X 6 and can print right onto an index card.

I don't know about you, but potato chips are my biggest weakness. Hidden deep in the Ellie Krieger cookbook is this fantastic, healthier alternative. Not only is it tasty, but it's so easy and fun to make. And when zucchinis are growing in your garden, it's nice to have a lot of options.

• Next time I make these, I'm going to cut thicker zucchini slices. Because these shrink a bit while baking (they looked just like Shrinky Dinks for you thirty-somethings out there!), some of them became too thin and fell apart.
• I know it's hard to eat just one, but remember to share with family and friends. But hey, if they're not quick enough, what are you going to do? Enjoy!

Barbara Kingsolver writes about "zucchini wars" in her book - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I laughed out loud many times while reading about how she dealt with a zucchini surplus. I just found the chapter about her zucchini wars online at this site:

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1822

Read it for a great laugh. Just don't drink milk while doing it. You know, too much laughter plus milk equals an embarrassing moment. C'mon, it's happened to all of us at some time.

Right? No? Oh well. Just me.

Sweet and Savory Snack

Ellie Krieger has a recipe for Spiced Mixed Nuts that is crazy good. Someone please take these away from me. Lock them up somewhere safe. I'm serious. You should only make the following recipe when you're expecting a lot of people over. Otherwise, I can't be held liable for what might happen in your house.

1/2 cup raw pecans
1/2 cup raw almonds
1/3 cup shelled raw pistachios
1/3 cup raw cashews
1/3 cup shelled raw pumpkin seeds
1 T pure maple syrup
1/2 t curry powder
1/8 t cayenne pepper
1/2 t dried rosemary
1/4 t salt
Cooking spray

Preheat the oven to 325 F. Combine the nuts and seeds in a medium bowl. Add the maple syrup, spices, rosemary, and salt and toss to combine.

Coat a baking sheet with cooking spray, then transfer the coated nuts to the sheet and spread evenly in a single layer. Bake, stirring once, until the nuts are fragrant and lightly toasted. Approx. 15-20 min. Remove from the oven and let cool.

• After the mixture cooled, I added dried cherries, cranberries and thin pretzels called "pretzel crisps" to the batch. Last night I ran out to my class (yes, I'm quite the scholar. check out my class at http://www.dcimprov.com/college/learnimprov.htm), with a bag of this for dinner. I normally would never skip a meal, but I lost track of time. I opened my ziploc bag of these during our break and many heads whipped around to see where the aroma was coming from....

And then there were none.

The only remnants that remain of Ellie Krieger's energy bars are the crumbs on my desktop. Old Mother Hubbard opened her cupboards and found them bare...well, of these scrumptious breakfast bars, anyway. Sigh. It's like they never existed. Here's how it happened: while going through our pantry last fall to do my first ever inventory. I found a very large stack of store bought, highly processed energy bars and jelly beans (yuck, don't even get me started on that.) These went to the pile marked "basement." Even though I didn't want to eat processed food anymore, I wasn't going to deny my hubby everything he was used to - he is a runner and needs these items on occasion, so they remain in our house still.

From then on, I was on a mission to find a way to create a substitute that was even better. More than a necessity item to power up for runs, but something "craveable" as Ellie puts it. Just a few days ago, I went through my nuts, seeds and dried fruit section of the pantry and sadly, 1/3 of it had to be trashed. If they didn't taste superior, they were gone. So I had to slightly alter Ellie's recipe. Here's her original one and I'll include my adjustments in the notes below:

Energy Bars by Ellie Krieger

Cooking spray
1 cup quick cooking rolled oats
1/2 cup raw unsalted sunflower seeds
1/2 cup toasted wheat germ
1/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup dried apricots
1/2 cup raw almonds
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup pitted dried dates
1/2 cup powdered nonfat dry milk
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 cup pure maple syrup
2 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Coat a 9 by 13-inch baking pan with cooking spray. Place all ingredients except the syrup and eggs in a food processor and pulse until the mixture is finely chopped. Add the syrup and eggs and pulse until the mixture is well combined. It will resemble a coarse paste. Transfer to the baking pan and spread evenly. Bake until just done, about 20 minutes. Cut into 20 squares.

• My sunflower seeds went bad, but I had fresh pumpkin seeds leftover from last week's pumpkin muffins.
• The recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of dried fruit. Unfortunately, my apricots and dates looked sub par and I was fresh out of raisins. Instead I used dried cherries (I could only find sweetened) and dried cranberries sweetened with apple juice. 1 1/2 cups total (Split 50-50)
• After it cooled, I cut it into 12 even bars and wrapped them separately in saran wrap and put them in freezer bags. One bag went to the pantry, the other to the freezer. It is now 48 hours later, and there are all gone. They were so fantastic that I had to share them with friends.
• Yes, I know I just posted an Ellie recipe when I said I would hold off, but if you only knew the restraint I was showing! I've made another five or so recipes from her new book and enjoyed them. What can I say? She had me at hello.