Freshly Toasted
For my morning bowl of oatmeal I have a variety of things to add for flavor and nutrition -- hemp seed, flax seed meal, wheat germ, chopped almonds, chopped pecans, fresh/frozen/dried fruit, cinnamon, cardamom, cocoa powder, etc. I also have shredded unsweetened coconut and have mixed it in a few times but never found it very satisfying. Then I decided to take the time to toast it in a dry skillet first. And the angels from heaven sang! Oh my gosh, it's sooo much better, it has a thousand times more flavor. After discovering this, I've been having fresh local raspberries and toasted coconut in my oatmeal every morning that I can. I'm glad I spent that bit of time to try toasting it. It's amazing how a simple concept like toasting something, can change the flavor completely.
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| Freshly toasted coconut. |
Of course it sucks to pull out a skillet every morning and take a few minutes to toast this up, and Husband Jeff already makes fun of the amount of time it takes to prepare my breakfast. But I think it's completely worth it, the flavor is great. And otherwise I wouldn't even be using the coconut and it would sit in my freezer, lonely. I'm making it worth it to have it in the house. This morning I toasted an extra serving and put it in a container for tomorrow, hopefully that works out so I can toast a larger batch every once in a while rather than each morning.
P.S. - After I discovered how awesome toasted coconut is, I tried toasting hemp seed, but it didn't really seem any different. Not worth it.
Not-A-Watermelon
When I came home the other day I saw this sitting on the counter and the bulbous end was facing me so it looked circular and it was so large I thought it was a personal watermelon! Of course as I got closer it was obvious it was a gigantic zucchini from our garden that we let go too long.
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| Huge zucchini. |