Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Butter Muffins #MuffinMonday

Whole grain oatmeal muffins sweetened with cookie butter and studded with raisins. It tastes like a treat, and yet it's reasonably wholesome at the same time.  Try these for a super afternoon snack!

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It's no secret I'm a fan of whole grain baked treats for a snack. From my Banana Peanut Butter Cake to an upcoming Really Just As Good For You As A Bowl of Oatmeal Breakfast Cookie (yeah, the name is a work in progress) I just don't see why I can't boost the nutrition of a snack by making it a wee bit more wholesome some of the time. I won't mess with the classics--My Scottish Grandma's Shortbread will not be made with whole wheat flour in my kitchen--but for an after school snack for the kids, why not?

Deep Dish Pizza with Artichokes, Kalamata Olives, and Garlic Scape Pesto

This pizza is layered with mozzarella cheese, marinated artichoke hearts, and kalamata olives tucked under an Italian sausage blanket spread with garlic scape pesto.

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I'm working on refining my "elevator speech", a way to describe what it is I do to people I meet.

In the 30 second version, I'll touch on the flavor of a freshly picked tomato or strawberry vs their store bought counterparts and comment that it's easy to choose to eat locally for the flavor. In the longer version, I'll bring up garlic scapes--one of the more unusual, you've never seen this before therefore it must be locally grown, items in a Spring farm share basket. I specify Spring because, even though you'll only find garlic scapes right after they are harvested in the early part of the growing season--you can put up garlic scapes to enjoy year round.

I'll be giving a talk about local eating at my neighborhood community center in May, and I'm hoping for a couple of garlic scapes to harvest as props. Conveniently I missed a few bulbs of garlic when I harvested last June, and those older established bulbs have a jump on the garlic I planted last October so it's possible I'll have my 'visual aids'. If you're puzzled by what a garlic scape is--it's just what would be the flowering portion of garlic. You can see some gorgeous shots of a scape here on my Garlic Scape Recipe Round Up. I plant my garlic cloves, just like my daddy plants daffodils, in the Fall. Instead of enjoying the pretty flowers, though, I cut off the curly scape while the blossom is still a tight bud, and pulverize those stems for their mild garlic flavor.  With no energy needed to go for a showy floral display, the resulting garlic bulb is bigger--my end goal.

Now, I'll rave about garlic scapes to anyone who will listen, but the way I love them most is in pesto. I will freeze scoops of pesto (I make it thick so it stays in a clump when freezing) for up to a year. Initially I'm hoarding my garlic scape pesto stash, but this time of year I'm seeing the garlic pop up (and sharing it on my Instagram feed) and knowing that scape season is approaching so I can be free and easy with my stash.

This ^^ is all to say that, in this pizza, I used some of my garlic scape pesto as the sauce. If you don't have a stash in your freezer, use any pesto you feel like using. It will be delicious because you made it with love, and that's what matters the most, right?

Whole Wheat Banana Peanut Butter Cake

Bananas and peanut butter with Reese's pieces and chocolate chips in a whole grain snack cake. This is a terrific way to use up leftover bananas for a sweet treat.

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It is rare in my house that a bunch of bananas get consumed, one at a time, each at their peak (which, for me, is without a tinge of green or a speck of brown to mar that pretty yellow peel). Sometimes I feel like the bunch stays bright green for days, and then a matter of the few hours I'm asleep and out of the kitchen each night, they magically turn a mottled brown.

Don't misunderstand, I love the flavor of an actual ripe banana, and if I want to bake or smoothify when I hit the store I'll look first for marked down "ripe" [NOT OVERRIPE, THEY ARE PERFECTLY RIPE sorry to shout] bananas. But eating out of hand, public banana style, I like my bananas a pure yellow.

I am nattering on about bananas so I can tuck some photos here and there because I've got 2 different photo sessions with this cake. Last summer, at the conclusion of marching band camp, we had probably close to half a case of nicely ripe bananas left. They were too far gone for me to eat. Too far gone on a Friday afternoon to make it to the Foodbank Monday morning for subsequent distribution. Too far gone to act on when the kid needed to be hauled to the next activity. [As an aside, my son had 4 things going on last summer between sports camps and school camps and life forums and college visits, and all 4 of them happened in less than a 3 week stretch. Oy.]

These bananas needed to be used or put up right away, so the other volunteers and I divvied them up and I took home an armful. Did you know you can freeze bananas by opening the freezer door/drawer and chucking the banana inside? Simple as that. No need to wrap or peel or dice or any of that. Nature made the perfect freezer wrap for bananas and I don't mess with nature too much. If you have an organized freezer you may wish to place the banana, but my freezer is usually so full that I open it a tad, hope nothing cascades out, chuck in the bananas and close it up quick.