January 9th, 2006 - Homemade snacks
Yesterday, I made some snacks. Not a single one turned out “right.”
Parched corn: I dried some corn last summer (and my brother also gave me some for Christmas) and found a recipe for parched corn. You fry the dried corn until it turns brown and beings to pop. Said to take 1-5 minutes. It took at *least* 10 minutes and neither batch ever popped. It got pretty brown however so I stopped. It’s…weird. (It’s also what I’ve seen folks eating on Survivor when they get dried corn to feed chickens….) It’s sweet, like sweet corn, but it’s dry so it doesn’t feel like sweet corn. I think it would be interesting with some spices. I didn’t want to play with it the first time around. I’m only eating it because it’s not horrible (I’m snacking on it as I write). But it’s not very exciting.
Peanut-banana somethings: I love peanut butter and I’ve been trying out various recipes for peanut butter snacks. This one included dried bananas. I believe the recipe was wrong. It called for 1.5 cups of butter, to 1.25 cups of peanut butter and 3 cups of oats. For starters, you toast the oats. Said to take 15-20 minutes at 250 until lightly brown. I cooked mine over 30 minutes and they never got even the slightest bit brown! Then, the butter–you melt the butter, pb, and honey, then pout in the bananas and oats. Then drop by spoonfuls onto waxed paper. I added nearly 2x as much pb and anouther 2 cups or so of oats. There’s no way you drop it by spoonfuls onto anything. It was still liquid. I ended up spreading it on a cookie sheet to make bars instead. Unfortunately, you have to store it in the fridge (or freezer) because they melt. (Aw shucks. I forgot to get the ones I wanted to begin to work for lunch out of the fridge!)
Apple Snackle: dried bananas, raisins, nuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon. I should have halved the brown sugar. This doesn’t work as a finger food because of the large amount of sugar. I’ve used up my dried apples, however, so I can’t add more. I’ve shaken the sugar down, will eat some of it, then refill with additional dried fruit. Maybe I’ll buy some cheap apples at the store to dry. (My other dried apples were from farmer’s markets and my neighbors.)
Everythings eatable, it just didn’t turn out the way the recipe said it would or the way I’d like them. Oh well! They are all homemade, inexpensive, and nutrious (except, maybe, all that butter, but you can’t stand to eat a very large piece at once anyway!).
One Response to “Homemade snacks”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
January 9th, 2006 at 6:48 pm EST
The peanut butter thing sounds as though it has way too much butter. The Apple Snackle sounds as though it would be very good on hot cereal, ice cream, and stuff like that. As a topping for muffins, befoer you bake them… in pancakes… Maybe I’d better make some.