I had the privilege of developing a second recipe for a quarterly newsletter to highlight papaya (read about the first recipe I developed here!). Now that I’m a new mom and need a fast and filling breakfast, overnight oats are perfect. These are packed with protein thanks to the addition of Greek yogurt. The combination of honey and almond is delicious with any fruit if you can’t find papaya. I hope you enjoy these as much as I have!
One of the things that has been hardest for me to adjust to while living in Okinawa is the inability to get ingredients when I need them. In America, I could go to a grocery store and expect to find everything on my list. If the store didn’t have what I needed, although an inconvenience, I could stop at a different store to get it. In Okinawa, this is not always the case. The on-base grocery store, called a commissary, carries most American products that you could want, but not many specialty ingredients. Sometimes, I can find the items at off-base grocery stores, but due to cultural differences with food and the fact that we are 5,000 miles away from America, this is not always the case. The commissary, and every on-base store, commonly runs out of things (the running joke is that they will never have something in stock when you actually need it) so it is common to see Facebook posts asking where people have found certain ingredients off-base.
The summer after my sister and I graduated from college, we found ourselves with a half-used bag of brown rice flour. Not wanting the flour to go to waste, or miss out on an opportunity to bake, we searched for a new recipe. We decided upon pumpkin granola bars, which I quickly fell in love with, or rather, with the concept of. I loved making my own granola bars. I could control the ingredients, they were always in the freezer for a mid-morning snack or quick breakfast at work and it gave me an excuse to bake every couple of weeks. I’m also in love with anything pumpkin, so pumpkin granola bars should have been perfect for me, but they weren’t. The recipe was loaded with sugar and oil and not much else. The bars were dry, but when I tried to add more moisture, they got gooey. My sister and I both tried to tweak the recipe, but after a few years and more changes than I can count, I still wasn’t satisfied.
One day, I had the brilliant idea to check Pinterest (duh!). At first, I just wanted to find similar recipes so I could continue to try to fix the one I was using. But then, I stumbled upon this particular recipe. It seemed too good to be true. Ground flaxseed. Almond milk. Chocolate chips! Pumpkin!!
