eclaire (what's in a) name?

as promised, i’m sharing the recipe for the delicious raspberry bars i made for the picnic last weekend. these bars came out of our favorite food magazine vegetarian times, and were absolutely amazing, combining some of my favorite foods: oats, cinnamon, and raspberries.  mmm, my mouth is watering just thinking about them!

i made a couple of changes to the veggie times recipe – the main change was using fresh raspberries and mushing them with a fork instead of using the raspberry jam that was called for in the original version.  i found the fresh raspberries gave the bars a delicious and full flavor, but were a little soggy from the extra water in fresh berries vs jam.

so, when i had the occasion to make the bars again this weekend for my sister-in-law’s house warming party (yes, i liked them enough to make twice in one week), i used raspberry jam.  the jam bars were a lot crispier (the top was especially crunchy, with the texture of granola rather than soft oatmeal cookie), but they had more of a hint-of-raspberry flavor than a full bodied, how-did-you-pack-this-much-raspberry-flavor-into-such-a-little-bar taste.  so, my dear readers, when you make this recipe you’ll have to decide: crispy and crunchy with raspberry aftertaste or soft cookie, packed with raspberry deliciousness.  good luck with the choice – i still can’t decide how i would make them the next time.

Read the rest of this entry »

hi readers, how are you doing? long time no post. i hope you’re all having a good summer and enjoying the beautiful weather outside. we’ve been quite busy the past month, with both fun events (peter and jenny’s wedding, katie’s birthday, and a trip to ohio) and a sad event.

throughout the good times and bad, the constant in our lives is food – whether it’s the (mostly) healthy stuff we make at home or the not so healthy stuff we eat when we’re on vacation. i love food, and as you may have gathered from other posts, cooking is part of my genetics – my whole family loves to prepare and consume delicious comida. mike and i make at least 4-5 meals at home per week, all of which are vegetarian and some of which are vegan (i will eat and bake with eggs, but i use very little dairy). i also read a ton of food blogs (my favs are 101 cookbooks, smitten kitchen, and vegan lunchbox), and we subscribe to a great magazine called vegetarian times that continually inspires us to create new, seasonal meals.

a month or so ago, my sister-in-law laura and i were sharing our favorite food blogs, and she was telling me how she wants to create her own food blog about the scrumptious vegan food she cooks. during the course of the conversation, i began to wonder why i haven’t yet taken some of the things i love doing – cooking, writing, and taking pictures – and combine them into blog posts about food. silly me!!

so…drum roll please….i am planning on posting at least once per week with a dish we’ve made! many of the recipes will be classic powell family cuisine that i grew up eating (i should probably make sure my parents are ok with me publishing the secret family recipes – will you guys please let me know if this is ok in the comments?), and the rest will be my own spin on vegetarian times or food blog recipes, letting you know how well they turned out in real life.

to begin this new feature on my blog, i prepared a picnic lunch that you may have read about on my husband’s blog. we packed up the picnic items: falafel, pita bread, hummus, fresh veggies, my own version of tabouli salad (recipe is below), iced tea, and some delicious raspberry bars  into our backpacks and biked out to the bluffs of wilder ranch to enjoy the feast and the view.

Read the rest of this entry »

my grandmother, marion claire white, passed away last week after a long fight with alzheimer’s.

below is a picture circa 1981 – my mom is in the upper left corner wearing the green dress, my grandma marion is next to her in the printed dress, i am the baby seated on the lap of my great grandmother clara, and next to clara is my great grandfather charlie:

and here’s a more recent picture from my grandparent’s 60th wedding anniversary in august of 2007: