Pumpkin and Banana Breakfast Muffins

With pumpkins everywhere, and with supermarkets pushing canned pumpkin deals non stop, I somehow found myself purchasing a couple of cans, that I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to use them for. So much for thinking I was a savvy customer, who can’t be influenced too easily!
Even though the canned puree can survive practically forever, I still felt I needed to use at least one right now, and came up with the following muffins.

Quick Onion-Cheese Flat Bread

What to do if you’re craving fresh bread out of the oven, but you don’t want to invest  the time in waiting for the yeast to proof? This tasty rustic bread is the answer: it can be made in 30 minutes, baking time included!

Puffed Rice Squares with Tahini and Honey

Puffed rice treats are popular as a quick snack, known mostly in its commercial version, which is overly sweet and far from healthy.
While the treats are quick and easy to make at home, unfortunately, too many of the homemade versions list ingredients such as sugar coated puffed rice, artificially flavored commercial marshmallows, corn syrup and other similar additions, that make them just as bad as the store-bought ones.

Stewed Rhubarb Two Ways

Rhubarb season is at its peak, and, as I’m very fond of its unique texture and tangy flavor, I ended up buying quite a few stems lately.
After making my favorite upside-down cake with it (click HERE for recipe), I opted for lighter ways of preparing the stems.

Spelt, Yogurt and Olive Oil Burekitas and Roulade, with Mushrooms and Goat Cheese Filling

The following recipe is a free-style version of the Sephardic Burekitas, (small hand pies), which I’ve previously posted here (check THIS and THIS posts).

Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Pancakes

Roasting sweet potatoes brings out their flavor to the fullest; the process concentrates their flavor, they caramelize at the edges and become a real treat.

Carrots, Almonds, Coconut and Golden Raisins Breakfast Bars

While I mostly prefer a protein-based breakfast, I also like to have other options every now and then. The following super-healthy bars are a good example of that: they are loaded with high fiber ingredients, fairly low on sugar and fat, and are a great tasty way to start the day.

Apricot and Cardamom Muffins

Apricot season is very short, and on top of it, they tend to soften quickly after buying. So when I ended up with some that started to soften, I decided to bake some quick muffins with them.

Filo Bake with Spinach, Mint and Cheeses

This tasty dish was inspired by the two others: the Greek Spanakopita, (layers of filo brushed with oil, with greens with Feta cheese filling), and the Bulgarian Banitsa dish (in which the filo sheets are rolled with feta, yogurt and eggs mixture).

A Few Dishes with Dandelion Greens

Dandelion is known mostly as a seasonal plant, of which all its parts have been used in cooking and traditional medicine from ancient times. To many who are unfamiliar with the plant, the greens are many times considered an invasive weed in fields and gardens, but they are in fact edible and highly nutritious. As I’m not a gardener myself, nor a forager of wild greens, I’ve never tried them, until I recently found them at the store, and decided to buy a bunch.

Multi Grain Soda Bread

Soda bread is the perfect bread to bake when you want a fresh warm loaf, without waiting for the dough to rise. The texture is obviously denser than yeast dough bread, but the easiness and quickness of making this bread compensate for that.
Unlike in traditional Irish soda bread, here I, once again, used different types of flour in the dough, in order to give it a more interesting texture and higher nutritional value.