A super easy chewy granola recipe

We’ve never made granola from scratch, so we decided to give it a whirl. We adapted this recipe into a peanut butter & cranberry chewy granola. Like any recipe we ever attempt, it’s super easy (and tastes great!).

Step 1: toast the dry ingredients (oats and almonds) at 350F for 5 minutes. Stir them around, then continue toasting for another 3-5 minutes. Pour into a large bowl.

Step 2: melt the butter, honey, vanilla extract, and brown sugar over low heat, stirring occasionally until fully dissolved.

(Clearly, a spatula would have worked best to flatten the granola, but we don’t have one. So we kept it real and used our rice scooper.)

If the granola is too crumbly as you cut it, stick it back in the fridge for another 30 minutes and try again. Otherwise, enjoy!

PS: There are tons of other ingredients you could add instead (like chocolate chips, blueberries, dried coconut) or remove (peanut butter, etc.). This recipe is prime for improvisation.

The power of a good meal and dear friends

For a few reasons, I took a break from photography and blogging this summer (…and autumn… and now we’re approaching the end of the year… yikes!). But one of the instances that brought back my love for photography was this get-together with 2 dear friends, Chrystine and Nicole. Chrystine hosted us at her house, and it could not have been more perfect.

We started off with appetizers…

…and some of the best tea I’ve ever had (ginseng oolong, I think?). It left you with a sweet taste in the back of your throat, almost like honey.

Then we moved on to the main course, cooked by Chrystine herself:

the best steak salad ever with butter-and-garlic roasted mushrooms and butter lettuce, with a side of potatoes au gratin with cheese and bacon (sadly not photographed because I instantly started eating it).

And even though we were stuffed, we still had room for coffee and chocolate.

But even topping that was the company and conversation. (~Thank you, N & C, for the lovely day!)

The easiest apple tart I’ve ever made

After seeing Bonnie Tsang reference this apple tart recipe from Ree, the Pioneer Woman, it looked so easy that I had to try it.  (And by “I had to try it,” I mean “I photographed my husband making this at my request.” Poor guy.)

And yes, it was just that easy. So few ingredients. So simple to make.

This was how we made it, ever-so-slightly modified from the Pioneer Woman recipe:

Ingredient list:
2 medium-sized apples
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 frozen pastry sheet, split into halves
1 lemon

The how-to:
1) Cut and core the apples, then slice into thin slices and put into a bowl.
2) Mix in brown sugar, salt, and squeeze in the juice of half of the lemon. Stir and let sit for 10 minutes.
3) Put the apple slices onto the pastry sheet.
4) Pop the apple-topped pastry sheets into the oven at 415F degrees until the tart browns (~15-20 min)
5) Sprinkle powdered sugar over the top, serve with ice cream, and enjoy!