Yankee-Belle Cafe

My birthday was a few weeks back, and for dessert, my eldest daughter brought a delicious Blueberry Cobbler. It had OJ in it, which gave it a unique, but delicious taste. You can find the recipe here, but I recommend reading the comments because the tweaks made it even better.

The rest of this is like an O. Henry tale.

I had some (a lot) of blueberries that I'd bought at the Farmer's Market.

Unfortunately, it had rained a lot that morning, so when my youngest opened the blueberries, they weren't in the best of shape.

No worries, said I. I will bake something with them. So she stored them in the fridge.

Then DD#1 showed up with the aforementioned cobbler.

I forgot about the sad blueberries in the frig.

Then one day, I was in the supermarket (really, not too many days later) and I saw this.




I thought, OH! I can put that in a pan and layer the blueberries on top!

Happily dreaming of maple praline pecan blueberries, I told my daughter the good news.

Are you seeing the O. Henry twist yet?

Yes, she'd eaten all the blueberries because she felt badly and didn't want them to go to waste.

So, now I had granola, but no blueberries.

Alas, the supermarket had a sale, and these turned out to be the best blueberries I've had all summer!


The recipe is so basic.
Grease pan with butter.
Spread granola.
Layer blueberries on top.
Bake.

I have no idea how long I baked. Since nothing really needed to be cooked, I just baked long enough for the blueberries to get juicy and blend in.

This was delicious as dessert (especially with vanilla ice cream), but I discovered it made an even better (and healthier) lunch when mixed with vanilla Greek yogurt.

Honestly, the granola and blueberries could probably just go in the yogurt without baking, but it tasted really good this way.






So, speaking of celebratory things (we were, weren't we?) yesterday was release day for a really fun collection of novels I did with a group of Love Inspired author friends.

When I was invited to do the collection, I knew it would mean writing a Back to School book right after I finished the school year when I wanted to be celebrating summer.

But sometimes you know something is the right choice. I'm so glad I did this. I really came to love writing about Brady and Emma and little Amy, and writing their story made me excited to go back to school!



Love by the Letter by Cate Nolan:

Emma Prescott always knew she wanted to be a teacher. Reading was a dirty word to Brady Howell. A diagnosis of dyslexia gave a name to his learning disability, but it didn’t help the letters make sense. Only Emma did that, and the best friends were inseparable until Brady chose the cheerleader who made him feel good about himself, abandoning the girl who was a reminder of his disability.

Now a single father, Brady is back and needs Emma’s help. Emma is certain she can help his daughter learn to read, but does she dare risk her heart again for the only man who has the power to break it?

 Ingredients (which I doubled for mine because I knew lots of my kids would love this one):
2 cups rolled oats
1/3 wheat germ, (skipped it because I forgot to buy it)
1/2 cup almond slices
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 maple syrup
1 tbs milk
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup dried cherries
1 tbs orange zest

 Here are the oats, cinnamon, almonds.
 The maple syrup. MMMMMM. Smells divine.
 Toast in the oven for 30 minutes, turning/tossing every 10 minutes or so.
 After the granola is toasted, add the cherries. (Not before, like I did, and then realize they would just burn in the oven.)
 You can use this on anything, even a bowl of cereal to add fiber and flavor, but I love Greek yogurt in the mornings, so I added it to vanilla yogurt.
 I had some fresh raspberries on hand (YUMMY) so I added those in.