March 11: National Oatmeal-Nut Waffle Day

A search for "oatmeal nut waffle recipe" turns up this recipe from Taste of Home.  Many other sites link or cite that recipe, and when I looked at the other oatmeal nut waffle recipes online they were all exactly the same as the one from Taste of Home. 

I halved the recipe and used soy milk instead of regular milk.  I still had some slivered almonds left from almond day so I used those for the nuts in this recipe.  I think I'll be making this recipe again as it was a easy recipe to follow and the resulting waffles were very tasty.  I think I'll have to try adding some fruit, like bananas or blueberries. 

The waffles were tasty on their own, but I did top one with cherry-blueberry jam and another with cranberry preserves.  I had the waffles as part of brunch, but SlashFood suggests making a dinner of the waffles by pairing them with chicken.  That sounds intriguing enough that I may just have to try that later this week with the leftover waffles. 

February 25: National Clam Chowder Day and National Chocolate Covered Nuts Day

National Clam Chowder Day

The 21st of last month was New England Clam Chowder Day.  Now, today is just National Clam Chowder Day and I think this is for all types of clam chowder.  Did you know there was more than just New England and Manhattan Clam Chowder?  Apparently there's also Rhode Island, Hatteras, Delaware, and Minorcan Clam Chowders - all different just enough.  I'll have to make it a goal to try all of them.  (Yes, I have some mundane life goals.)  Of course, each region claims that their clam chowder is the ONLY clam chowder. 

It's interesting to read about the history of clam chowder.  Although, the histories of clam chowder you find on the net are all a little different.  What's Cooking America has the history of New England, Manhattan, and Minorcan Clam Chowders. 


National Chocolate Covered Nuts Day

In honor of National Chocolate Covered Nuts Day, I picked up some Sea Salt and Turbinado Sugar Dark Chocolate Almonds from Trader Joe's.  One thing I love about Trader Joe's is that the cashiers feel free to chat with you about the products you're buying.  Today, the cashier looked at the chocolate-covered almonds and asked if I had them before.  I hadn't and he let me know that everyone else who has had them said you get hooked after one.

Everyone else wasn't kidding.

The tasty sea salt and turbinado
almonds set me back $3.99

I've had the chocolate and salt flavor combination before and I love it.  These Trader Joe's almonds were no exception.  These hit all my taste buds and sent them to nirvana.  I ate quite a few of these and then firmly put the lid back on so I would stop eating them.  They really are delicious and can easily become a mindless eating food.  I'll have to be careful about that.

If Sea Salt and Turbinado Sugar just doesn't appeal to you, Trader Joe's has other chocolate covered almonds.  The Sea Salt and Turbinado cost me $3.99.  Some stores will sell other chocolate covered nuts, but I most often see chocolate covered almonds.  You can also make your own chocolate covered nuts - just melt down some of your favorite chocolate in a bowl or saucepan, toss the nuts in, then spread the nuts on a baking sheet or parchment paper.  Let cool and then enjoy.

You can also just get plain dark or
 milk chocolate covered almonds.

February 16: Almond Day

Today's Almond Day!  In my opinion, almonds are simply a wonderful food.  Everyone I've met who is involved with the field of nutrition loves them and recommends them.  (I'm sure there are some nutrition/food professionals that don't like almonds, but I haven't met them yet.)  Almond scents and artificial almond flavoring makes me cringe - they often smell and taste too chemically.  I did make a honey-almond soap once that was absolutely divine smelling, though. 

Did you know that US commercially grown almonds only come from California and that California is the leading world supplier of almonds?  This PDF from UC Davis gives excellent information and some interesting facts about almonds.  I found it interesting to learn that there are more than thirty varieties of almonds.  What was really eye-opening, though, was to learn that there's an Almond Reserve to help keep almond prices stable.

The California Almond Board tries it's best to make eating almonds easy for consumers.  They have tins you can order to help you portion your daily intake of almonds.  The CAB says a serving is 23 almonds, yet the 100 calorie pack I had today had 22 almonds.  (Yes, there are only 20 in the picture.  I got hungry and ate two before taking the picture.)

While I'll use almonds in cooking, frequently using almond slivers or sliced almonds in place of pepitas or pine nuts, I hardly ever bake with almonds.  I decided to try making this vanilla almond cookies recipe from Chobani. The reviews were mixed and few, but I gave it a try because I had some Chobani I wanted to use up.  After reading the comment about how "cakey" the cookies were, I reduced the baking powder to 1 tsp.  I also substituted almond slivers for slices, since I had slivers on hand.

Here you can see the first batch on the right and the second on the left.  For the first batch, I kept everything the same but I didn't care for the shape of the baked cookies, so I rolled the remaining batches in sugar instead of just dropping them on the cookie sheet.  In the first batch, the cake-like nature of the cookies caused the almonds to shift when the cookies rose, so for the second batch I really pressed the almond slivers into the dough, slightly flattening the cookies in the process.


I didn't care for how the cookies came out.  They were still cake-like, but were oddly chewy.  Perhaps there's too much liquid in the recipe.  This is definitely a recipe that needs tweaking, but I think I'm going to use the rest of my almond slivers sprinkled on my cereals and salads or baked into a completely different cookie recipe.  Maybe I'll try this Almond Orange Cardamon Cookie recipe from the CAB.  One thing's for sure - I am definitely going to try this Beet Salad with Almonds and Chives recipe.