KrisNeely, Author at Ant & Anise • Page 4 of 15

Gluten-Free Granola #1

Bob’s favorite breakfast these days is fresh fruit topped with Greek yogurt and granola. Reasonable, right? Only thing is, it’s a generous helping of all three, piled up high like a mountain. A mountain of fruit, I tease him.

So we’ve been plowing through these breakfast staples pretty quickly. Being my dad’s daughter I’m, ahem, frugal in many ways. It irks me to pay a lot for food that I can easily make at home.

Like granola. Paying $15 for one kilogram of it seems like a lot to me, especially when we plow through a bag so quickly. So I set out to make my own….

Green Beans and Asparagus with Tangy Parsley Sauce

The holidays, for me, don’t officially end until we’ve eaten up the Christmas baking. We’re almost there: Just a few savory gruyere-pecan shortbread cookies, spiced with cayenne pepper, left to eat.

Now that we’re back into regular schedules and reasons for celebrating the season are dwindling, I’m craving vegetables — especially green ones — more. Maybe it’s to make up for all that shortbread I savored, err… inhaled, this past month.

This recipe for green beans and asparagus with a tangy parsley sauce hits the spot….

Wow, it is that time of year again. The calendar is running out on 2013, and fast.

I feel like I’ve eaten my weight in sugar in December, from recipe testing and tweaking. With the copious, rich food (savory and sweet) over the past few weeks, I’m happy to take a little time out of the kitchen.

So to close off 2013, here are a few of our favorite posts from this year:…

Chocolate Covered Coconut Snowballs: Gluten & grain free holiday treats

I’m going to cut to the chase here.

Not just because it’s a few days before Christmas and I have yet to get all my shopping done. (Eek!) But if you want to make these in time for the big day, you need a few hours of serious focus. Most of that time is for dipping in chocolate and rolling in coconut.

What I wanted to do is improve upon Purdy’s snowballs. I don’t buy a lot of chocolate at Purdy’s but every so often, when I’m walking down South Granville or through Oakridge mall, I’ll pop in and buy a couple snowballs or coconut clusters to nibble on my walk….

Oat Cardamom Shortbread

Marion Smith, a Scottish friend and neighbour of my grandmother’s, was an expert shortbread maker. Every year she would make multiple batches of her shortbread to package up in tins and mail to faraway friends and family.

I loved Marion’s Scottish shortbread. It had the same basic ingredients — butter, sugar, flour — as my mom’s melt-in-your-mouth shortbread (also delicious). But it was dramatically different: Sturdier, more grainy, and always presented in plain petite wedges without any red and green sprinkles.

One year, Grandma managed to persuade Marion not only to part with her beloved shortbread recipe, but to give us both a live demonstration of how she made it. (It’s true, Grandma was very good at getting people to do things for her.)…

Chicken madras with minted yogurt

I was craving Indian flavors this week. Something simple and fast to put together and, especially, a meal that wouldn’t leave me clutching my overstuffed belly.

Is that even possible?

I adore Indian food — the bold spices (especially cardamom and cumin), the rich creamy sauces, super spicy pickles, sweet tamarind and mango chutneys and the chewy naan bread. But we always seem to order too much when we go to Indian restaurants. Invariably, I reach that point where I’ve had quite enough to eat but somehow can’t stop myself from having another bite or two. Or five. Another piece of naan? Oh, um, well….sure, go on….