After dipping my toe back in the water last month, I am officially bringing back my monthly fitness goals series. Because boy do I need to get this body back into shape! A year of heavy travel and stressful life decisions apparently takes its toll. And since the approach of setting goals month by month (and holding myself accountable here) worked pretty well last time around, that’s where I’m starting again.

I’ve mentioned it in passing, but I’ll be spending most of this month in Hong Kong on an extended work trip. I’m getting more and more excited as it gets closer. I plan to have a regular exercise routine while I’m there, but more importantly, I want to make sure I am getting out and exploring as much as I can. And hiking! Hong Kong has incredible hiking all within easy commute of the downtown areas, and I plan on taking full advantage of the warm temperatures to make it a January full of long walks and the great outdoors. Offset, of course, by dim sum and roast pork but that’s a different conversation. Accordingly, my goal for this month is just about being out there, and steps is how I’m going to measure it. At a minimum, I want to hit 10K every day, and if that means that when I get home from work with 5,000 steps we have to venture out for a twilight walk to find the best dumplings in a new neighborhood? All the better. The only out I get are my two full plane days, and even then, I’ll do my best in the airport hallways. And come February, I’ll be reporting back here about the best hikes and long walks for exploring the city.

I’ve been making this oatmeal all year, but January seemed like a particularly good time to share it. This is super quick to make, and isn’t much of a stretch from a normal bowl of oatmeal – the only difference is that instead of adding brown sugar, banana, and nuts as toppings, you saute them in a bit of butter to start, then cook the oatmeal right on top of them, so you end up with a bowl of creamy oats deeply infused with sweet, buttery, banana-y goodness. Although I’m calling it bananas foster, I haven’t added any rum – that would definitely take it out of healthy breakfast territory – but I promise you it still tastes like bananas foster should. Only, in oatmeal form. For breakfast.

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Past Fitness Challenges

January ’14: 10 Visits to the YMCA; Recipe: Gluten-Free Olive-and-Feta Corn Muffins
February ’14: One vegan meal every day; Recipe: Pakistani Chickpea Pulao with Sweet-Hot Date-Onion Chutney
March ’14: Run 40  miles in 20 days; Recipe: Chocolate-Dipped Almond Butter Cookie Bites
April ’14: Walk 8,000 steps a day; Recipe: Herb-Flecked Spring Couscous
May ’14: 180 minutes of Nike Training Club; Recipe: Warm Arugula Salad with Maple Mustard Dressing
June ’14: Fresh fruit/veggies at every meal; Recipe: Chickpea Crepes with Grilled Curried Chicken and Mango Salsa
July ’14: 8 different types of exercise; Recipe: Homemade Spinach Wraps with Chopped Greek Salad Filling
August ’14: Relax; Recipe: Green Tea and Zucchini Noodles with Honey Ginger Sauce
September ’14: Average mile pace below 8’10″; Recipe: Potato, Poblano, and Chard Enchiladas with Salsa Verde
November ’14: Go to 6+ dance classes; Recipe: Crispy Brussels Sprout, Lemon Chicken, and Pomegranate Rice Bowl
December ’14: Hit my goal weight; Recipe: White Bean and Parsnip Soup with Guanciale
December ’15: Regular yoga practice; Recipe: Vegetarian Chili

Bananas Foster Oatmeal

My favorite oatmeal on a cold winter morning. Topped with caramelized bananas, nuts, and cinnamon.

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
• Yield: 2
• Category: Breakfast

Ingredients

• 1 TBS butter
• 2 TBS brown sugar
• 1/3 c. chopped pecans or walnuts
• 1 ripe banana, sliced
• 2/3 c. old-fashioned oats
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 c. whole milk

Instructions

1. In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the brown sugar and stir until melted, about 1 minute. Add the pecans and sliced banana and stir to coat in the brown sugar mixture. Cook until bananas are soft and fragrant, about 3-4 minutes, stirring frequently. Spoon half of the banana mixture into a bowl for topping your oatmeal.
2. Add the oats and cinnamon to the remaining half of the banana mixture still in the pan. Stir to coat the oats in the sauce. Toast the oats for 1 minute, then add the milk. Cook, stirring frequently, until oatmeal is thick and oats are soft, about 5-8 minutes, then remove from the heat. Divide oatmeal between two bowls and top with the reserved banana mixture. Serve immediately.

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I’d been moping a little bit about Valentine’s Day this year. Even though it’s not a huge holiday in my book, the fact that Trevor would be away (and far away, at that – he’s in Oman!) for business seemed unfair. But then scrolling through my feedly last week I came across this post by Melissa and remembered that I loved celebrating Valentine’s Day long before boys were in the picture. Like she says, it’s about “spreading a little extra love and joy to friends and family,” and when I think back, my best memories of this holiday are mostly of my girlfriends and family. I’m lucky enough to get to spend almost every day with my man, loving him, and even though the flowers and chocolates on the 14th are nice, they really aren’t the point. So I’m postponing the romantic part of February until Trevor is back, and today, I’m celebrating friends and family. [Edit: Because he’s the sweetest, Trevor still managed to get roses to my desk at work today even though he’s thousands of miles away. I love you, Trev.]

First up, family – as far back as I can remember, Valentine’s Day meant coming downstairs to a big heart shaped box of chocolates and a card from my mom telling us how much she loved us. I mostly remember these mornings as sort-of bleary-eyed surprises, probably because I had to get up for school at 6am most days and it’s pretty dark at 6am in February. She also always helped us make little homemade valentines to bring to school – bags of foil-wrapped hearts tied up in pink and red tuille with doile-and-construction-paper cards attached. Our valentines were way better than the average school valentine. So tonight I’m having dinner with my parents and my baby brother (who is probably dreading today, seeing as fifteen is probably the most awkward age for Valentine’s Day). We’re heaving steak and red wine and heart-shaped shortbread cookies and I’m really excited about it.

As for friends, I’m sending my three best college girlfriends these little care packages because celebrating your girlfriends is important. In high school, we used to have Valentine’s Day parties at my house where we would all wear pink and make each other goofy homemade cards and decorate sugar cookies while getting a little hyper from too much hot chocolate and giggling. It was great. Later, during our freshman year at Duke, Becky and I got all the pink things we could find at the Dollar General and then covered her dorm room floor with candy hearts while making valentine’s for our new found boy friends. Because part of celebrating your girlfriends is talking about how much you both love boys.

I was going to make cookies for these packages but after thinking about it, decided that maybe some crunchy dessert masquerading as a healthy snack would be more appropriate for my friends, who are all super busy and on-the-go students/teachers. This chocolate-almond-strawberry granola is inspired by (OK, I’m blatantly ripping it off) the only commercial brand of granola I’ve ever liked, LoveCrunch. I think I might like my version a smidge better, but I’m not sure I’m saving any money by making it myself – freeze-dried fruit is surprisingly expensive. The base is simply oats and almonds, which are coated with a mixture of melted coconut oil, cocoa powder, and honey before it’s baked. After it’s baked but while it’s still warm, you stir in the chocolate chips, resulting in heavenly clumps of granola held together by creamy bits of melted chocolate, which is seriously going to elevate your yogurt-eating experience. I made the mistake of bringing the care packages to work with me before I shipped them, and I was eating out of everyone’s bags – sorry if they seem a little light, guys, I promise I’ll make you some more when you come visit. But seriously, this stuff is kind of addictive. Be careful with it. Or just give it away to someone that you love.

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone!

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Chocolate-Almond-Strawberry Granola

Inspired by LoveCrunch and adapted loosely from Yummy Mummy. Makes about 8 cups.

• 6 cups rolled oats
• 2 c. chopped almonds
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 c. coconut oil
• 3/4 c. mild-tasting honey
• 3/4 c. cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 c. chocolate chips (or more or less depending on how dessert-like you want it…)
• 1 c. freeze dried strawberries

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. In a large bowl, stir together the oats, almonds, and salt until evenly mixed. Set aside.
2. Add the coconut oil and the honey to a small saucepan and heat over medium-low heat, stirring, until the coconut oil has melted and the consistency of the mixture is smooth. Remove from the heat and stir in the cocoa powder, whisking until all clumps are removed. Pour the chocolate mixture over the oats and stir to evenly coat the oats with the cocoa-mixture. Spread out on two large sheet pans and bake in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven, stir up the granola to prevent burning, then bake for another 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for 5-10 minutes, until warm but touchable. Return to the mixing bowl and add 1 cup of the chocolate chips to the warm granola, stirring to evenly combine.
3. Let granola cool completely, then stir in the remaining 1/2 c. of chocolate chips and the strawberries. Keep in an airtight container.

The post Happy Valentine’s Day // Chocolate-Almond-Strawberry Granola appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

Now that I’m back from my first real business trip – which was hectic and busy and fun and interesting and a serious crash course in Spanish, what with participants from Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Brazil – I’m here with a trip report and pictures from my mini-vacation to Vermont last weekend.  I’m probably being an idealist, but I have visions of Vermont as being beautiful in every season – green and bucolic in summer, crisp and splendidly colorful in the fall, quiet and snowy in the winter, and breathtakingly fresh in the spring.  I have some foundation for these ideas – I used to go to summer camp on Lake Champlain, and it was always gorgeous and idyllic.  More recently, I visited a friend at Middlebury in late spring, and I’ve never enjoyed a drive as much as the one through those mountains, nor seen quite as many daffodils in one place.  Now I can confirm that the fall is just as crisp and wholesome and nice as I imagined, leaving only winter for me to investigate.  If I like winter, I might just have to move there.

Stowe is a very quiet place in November – the leaf-peepers are gone, and the skiers have yet to arrive.  A few trees have straggling bursts of orange, but most leaves have faded to brown and begun to fall.  Frost covers everything in the mornings, but the sun can still be warm enough at midday to forego the winter jacket.  I loved it.  We drove up Friday afternoon and after getting settled in our hotel, we got a casual dinner at Piecasso, a local pizza place that made really good pizza (loved the crust), but just OK hamburgers (duh, Katie.  But, I only went the hamburger route because I had train station pizza at lunch).  Then early to bed – the biggest, best, most comfortable bed ever.  We stayed at the Green Mountain Inn, and had an absolutely wonderful experience.  A large part of this was due to the king-sized bed, gas fireplace, and fireside Jacuzzi tub combo, but we also enjoyed pretty much every other aspect of the hotel.  Highly recommended if you’re planning a trip up that way.

Saturday, we went for a frigid but absolutely gorgeous run on Stowe’s 5-mile riverside recreation path.  Everything was covered in beautiful frost even well after the sun had risen.  We passed a picturesque herd of dairy cows and crossed wooden bridges and it was basically the exact experience I was looking for.  After the run we had breakfast (real maple syrup on everything!) at The Gables Inn and did a little thrifting in a local “stuff” store – I got blog props, of course, but Trevor found the greatest old architectural magazine.  Old, like, 1880s old, and full of detailed black and white sketches of houses and staircases and it’s totally awesome.  We spent the afternoon (as well as Sunday morning) doing some of the foodier things that Vermont has to offer – touring the Magic Hat brewery in Burlington, sampling the cider at the Cold Hollow Cider Mill, picking up Lake Champlain chocolates, and trying every single one of Cabot’s cheddars.  Other than the brewery tour, I was kind of disappointed with the “factory” stores – they were very cut and dry and touristy, and mostly focused on selling their products at higher than retail price rather than demonstrating how they were made or even explaining the process.  I guess what I was really looking for was a more farm-to-table experience, and I probably shouldn’t have expected as much as I did from such big-box names.  I was tempted by the enormous bins of apples outside the cider mill on sale for 50 cents a pound.  50 cents a pound!  That’s a pretty good deal.  But, since I was leaving Monday morning and I haven’t finished my last batch of apples, I refrained.

Sunday we slept in and then had a lovely brunch at our hotel, then headed out.  On the way we stopped for a walk at the Waterbury reservoir, a beautiful, quiet spot with great views of the mountains over the water.  The area used to be farmland, and many of the trees were still covered in apples, with that great scent of slightly fermented apples hovering over the ground.  It was a good sendoff for our drive back to Massachusetts.

And now for the food – maple syrup is probably the most quintessential Vermont ingredient, so I knew this post had to include it somehow.  However, it is also one of the most expensive condiments I know of.  The lowest price I saw on it was $15 a quart, in a gas station close to our hotel, which is where I ended up buying some.  I’m sure you can get it more cheaply direct from a sugarhouse, but since it’s not sugaring season (maybe we’ll go back for it!) I figured this was my best bet.  Maple syrup in hand, I started going through maple-laden recipes I have bookmarked, but a lot of them called for a large amount of syrup and I just couldn’t bring myself to part with 2 cups of the precious stuff barely a week after I had gotten it.  As a happy medium, I went with these cookies, which are from Peter Berley’s Modern Vegetarian Kitchen.  As I mixed up the batch I was a little bit skeptical – no eggs, no sugar, no leavening, and only half a cup of flour?  Not your typical cookie.  But, as I pulled them from the oven and bit into one I was pleasantly surprised – they were some of the best cookies I’ve made in recent months.  Crunchy, dense, and both sweet and savory they make a great snack, and are particularly good dipped in a little bit of orange tea.  As an added bonus, they’re fairly healthy – although they are not low calorie (160 per cookie), the bulk of the calories in them are coming from the sesame seeds, which provide a massive dose of several minerals, as well as calcium, healthy protein, and fiber.  I think these may become my more wholesome and natural alternative to power bars for the near future.  Lastly, they can easily be made vegan with the simple substitution of olive oil for the melted butter, which is even recommended by the author.  They’re easy to whip up, so pick up some sesame seeds in bulk (try wholefoods) and give them a try!

Sesame-Cranberry Cookies

Adapted from Peter Berley’s Modern Vegetarian Kitchen .  Makes 9 cookies.

• 1/2 c. sesame seeds
• 1/2 c. flour
• 1/2 c. oats
• 1/2 c. dried cranberries, coarsely chopped
• pinch of salt
• 3 TBS maple syrup
• 3 TBS melted butter (could substitute olive oil for vegan cookies)
• 1 tsp vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.  Soak cranberries in hot water in a bowl for 10 minutes.  Meanwhile, pulse flour, oats, and salt together in a food processor until oats are finely ground.  Transfer to a bowl and mix in sesame seeds.  In a separate bowl, whisk together melted butter, maple syrup, and vanilla until combined, then pour wet ingredients into dry and whisk together.
2. Drain most of the water from the cranberries and add the cranberries to the dough.  Mix together until it forms a thick dough.  If the dough is too dry to press together, add a small amount of the cranberry soaking liquid to the dough to moisten it.  Form the dough into small balls and then flatten into 2 inch disks and place on baking sheet.  Bake for 15-17 minutes, rotating halfway through for even cooking, until cookies are just beginning to turn golden brown.  Great straight out of the oven and several days later!

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I have a confession to make.  I made and photographed this granola on April 8th.  Yes, that was two full weeks ago.  Yes, there is still some granola in my cupboard (and  yes I plan on eating it because I am a college student and college students don’t believe in food going bad).  I even had this whole post planned about my mom, and how she makes this incredible granola that my dad thinks she should sell, and how she just came to visit me and we had a fabulous time hiking in Western North Carolina… but then what happened was I got too busy actually doing the hiking in Western North Carolina (and the sitting in our private hot tub afterward).  And then I got home and had five major engineering assignments to complete in as many days.  And then suddenly Trevor was here and we were celebrating my 21st birthday with a pitcher of sangria in the Duke Gardens and although we did make some delicious things – french toast with cinnamon syrup, farfalle salad with pesto and kalamata olives, lemon squares, and, uh, duh, sangria – I was not about to spend that precious three days attempting to get the lighting on those lemon squares perfect.  And then finally I sat down last night to write about the stupid granola and I was suddenly overwhelmingly excited about falafel.  Life.  It happens.

But now you know all of the things I was going to say!  To recap: mom is awesome, hiking is awesome, birthdays are awesome, Trevor is awesome, granola is awesome.  Everything else you need to know is in the recipe below.  Oh, and even if you don’t make this granola, make your own granola.  It’s about 8 billion times better than anything you can get at the store.  Even than what you can get in the grain bins at Wholefoods.  Promise.

Granola

• 2 c. oats
• 1/2 c. sweetened, flaked coconut
• 1 c. nuts (chopped if desired)
• short 1/2 c. canola oil
• full 1/2 c. honey
• 1 c. dried fruit

1. Preheat the oven to 300°F
2. Mix together oats, coconut, and nuts in a large bowl.  Measure oil and stir in.  Measure honey in same cup (makes the honey slide out more easily) and stir in until evenly coated.  The more honey you use, the bigger your granola clumps will be.  You should use slightly more honey than oil.
3. Spread granola evenly on a baking sheet with sides.  Bake for 12 minutes, remove from oven, and stir to keep from burning.  Return to oven and continue baking for 12 minutes.
4. Remove from oven, and put back in bowl.  Stir in dried fruit and let cool.  Store in ziploc baggies.

*I almost always use dried cherries as my fruit and walnuts and pecans as my nuts, but you can use anything.  I’m really of the opinion that the cherries are essential though.

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