Cookbook Club: At Home with Madhur Jaffrey

To those who know me, it should come as no shock that I'm not really into reading books.  You will probably never see me on the beach reading the latest release from Emily Giffin (who happened to work at my firm before leaving to become a writer).  My Amazon wishlist rarely, if ever, contains a non-food-related book.  For the most part, the no-book policy works out pretty well for me - except for one thing: book clubs.  The thing about book clubs is that there's generally some "reading of books" involved.  I wanted to enjoy the camaraderie of my friends (and lots of wine), but without having to actually read a book.  The solution?  Cookbook Club.

Vanilla Frozen Yogurt & Granola

My parents gave me an ice cream maker for my birthday last year, but, seeing as how it was November, it stayed in the box for months.  With temperatures finally breaking 80 degrees, I decided to dust off the box, and put the ice cream maker to use.  I flipped through The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz and found that frozen yogurt seemed to be the easiest to make (no heating a custard on the stove and waiting for it to cool, no chopping and macerating of fruit).  The recipe below is based on his recipe for creamy vanilla frozen yogurt, which uses Greek yogurt in place of normal.  I added some fresh vanilla for taste and appearance.  The granola was also really simple to make and turned out to be awesome; I ate it for breakfast with non-frozen yogurt every day last week.  While the recipe only takes about 30 minutes to make, your ice cream maker bowl usually needs to freeze overnight before it can be used.  I store mine in the freezer so I don't have to plan ahead.