Keeping track of recipes

In this modern age it's sometimes difficult to keep track of recipes.  It used to be that you had a box for the recipe cards (maybe handed down in the family), or a stack of cookbooks, or a binder where you have pages organized that you've torn out of magazines, and that was pretty easy organization and everything was nearby in the kitchen.  But today, with the advent of the digital world, it's harder to keep track because not everything is paper or at your fingertips, and you can forget where you have recipies much easier.  For example, I have my cookbooks and binder, but then also have a digital recipe box on epicurious and one on allrecipes.  But then what happens when you find a great recipe on some other site or blog and can't save it into one of those two digital recipe collections?

For me, if I don't print it, I end up saying that "this is great, I want to make this" and then forget about it and usually can't find it.  If I print it, chances are I will make it, eventually.  I sometimes wish that there was one digital cookbook that I could save all my digital recipes into.  Maybe Evernote would be an option, or PDF all of the recipes and save them to a Dropbox folder or Google Drive...

How do others organize their digital recipe collections?  I'd love to know!

Spinach, Pea and Canadian Bacon Quiche

After being away for the weekend I had a bunch of eggs left in the fridge that needed to be eaten sooner rather than later, so quiche they became!

I did a quick google search for times and temps and found 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes was the most common posted so I set the oven for 350.

I then defrosted half a bag of frozen spinach and some frozen peas (maybe 1/2 a cup?).  Cracked and scrambled 6 eggs (I like a bit more egg in my quiche) and added estimates of spices as follows:

• 1/4 tsp of crushed red pepper
• 2 tsp of basil
• 1-2 tsp of parsley
• 1 tsp of paprika
• 1/2 tsp of marjoram

I really just eyeballed everything, but forgot the salt and pepper.  Oops!  Rolled out the pie crust, cut up the Canadian bacon and spread it around the bottom.  Added in the spinach and peas, added more Canadian bacon (one can never have too much bacon), sprinkled on some Daiya cheese and then poured the egg mixture over top of that, trying to cover everything.  Flattened everything with the back of a spoon and into the oven for 35 minutes it went.

At 35 minutes it was still a bit "wet" looking for me, I'm all in favor of dead eggs (meaning eggs on the drier side), so back in for another 5-6.

So 40 minutes is my new quiche time, at least in this oven.

Speaking of Daiya, we tried to make pizza the other day but I only had time for one trip to the grocery store (having food allergies usually means trips to different stores as there's no one store that has everything I need), so I went to Trader Joes as we really like their pizza dough.  (Confession, I went, paid, got to C's house, forgot the dough, so back I went.)  They have a vegan mozzarella cheese that we haven't tried so I got it and was fairly disappointed in it.  Maybe it was the fact that we had real cheese on one side with the vegan cheese on the other (with a DMZ down the middle) so we cooked it at our normal 400 temperature, but the vegan cheese was almost a liquid when it came out of the oven.  It did harden as it cooled, but also didn't taste great.  I'm sticking with Daiya, at least for the time being and for pizza.

Granola round 2

Didn't use a recipe this time for granola, except to check oven time and temperature.  I went through about 4-5 cups of granola in two weeks, the last 1-2 cups went to C so he could enjoy some too.

Oven: 300 for about 35 minutes, stirring every 10 or so
(amounts are approximate)
4.5 cups of oats
1/2 c. vegetable oil
1/2 c. honey (combination of conventional and my souvenir Scottish honey)
1/2 c. sliced almonds
2 T cinnamon
dash of ground nutmeg
dash of ground cloves

Mix everything together and put onto rimmed baking sheet and spread out.  Bake.  Turns nice and golden!

Add raisins and crasins after baked.  Apparently it will store for about 2 weeks (but should be finished by then!).

Might try with coconut oil next time...

Granola

I ran out of granola for my morning soy-yogurt and berries the other day and decided that rather than pay so much money for sugar filled granola, I was going to try to make some.  My mom does it, so I should be able to as well.

(I've had many couple non-dairy yogurts over the years to help make up for the pro-biotics that I don't get from dairy, soy yogurt is definitely my favorite.  Coconut yogurt is disgustingly sweet in the morning and the almond yogurt has a weird texture for me.  Trader Joe's has good soy yogurt, Whole Foods has several brands: O'Soy and just noticed that the Stoneyfield's version is back, and then Safeway just started carrying the Silk brand.)

I used this recipe from Chow.com for the first batch, but made a few changes.  I added 1 tsp of pumpkin pie spice instead of the cinnamon, 1/4 c. honey plus maple syrup to equal 1/3 c. as called for, slivered almonds (added after the first 15 in the oven) and then a mixture of raisins and dried cranberries.

Having the oven at 300 definitely makes it cook faster, but I would probably stir every 10 minutes rather than 15 as some stuck to the bottom of the pan.  Granted that could happen with it anyways as it has honey in it.

The second batch (I go through a lot of granola) I used a recipe from Epicurious called Everyday Granola (Bon Appetite, 2010).  I used the almonds instead of pecans as that's what I had on hand, omitted the coconut as that's not something I want in the morning, and then added more vegetable oil when it was looking too dry as I was mixing it up.

I stirred every 12 minutes for two rounds (300 degrees), then 10 for the last, cooking for about 34 minutes and that seemed to work well.  Can't wait to enjoy!