Marinated Goat Cheese

I was walking through the grocery store the other day and stumbled upon the cheese section ... ok, ok I was hording over the cheese section like a little cheese lord. Let's be honest, I make a bee line for the dang cheese section the moment I walk into the store. My obsession with cheese not withstanding, on this particular day I found a tub of marinated feta cheese. Of course I had to try it and what I found was soft cheese swimming around in this lovely pool of tangy olive oil with the tartness of a mildly sweet vinegar and spices. It was delicious! Crumbled on salads, over pastas, spread on crackers....or if you are like me, with a fork standing with the frig wide open. Love at first bite. I make all my own salad dressings so I figured, really, how hard can this be. I opted to take a stab at marinating goat cheese because I buy these massive logs of it at Costco and quite frankly, I'm swimming in goat cheese right now but you could absolutely make it with feta (truth be told I also marinated feta I bought at my farmers market...swoon!!) This is a great party hosting trick too!

Make my own what?!?

I am not really one of those do it yourself kinds of girls. That is to say, if I want something like granola, my first instinct is to march my butt right on down to the store and buy some. NOT make it myself. That's crazy talk! But alas the Food Network strikes again. This 5 ingredient fix woman was throwing together her own trail mix and it sounded GOOD and looked EASY. So I said to hell with it, I'm going to give it a go. Well, what do you know, it WAS good and very easy (espeically with the help of a silpat) ... and it was good, wait, did I say good? Because it WAS SO FREAKING GOOD!

Now I have to admit, I have a serious aversion to real maple syrup. It's just not my thing. I have actually been known to show up to brunch toting a mini bottle of Aunt Jemima in my purse! No joke. Aunt Jemima is what I want on my waffles, pancakes, and let’s be honest, on my bacon and sausage too (salty and sweet is a very normal flavor combination, thank you very much!)

So when ‘adjusting’ this recipe I had to think long and hard about swopping out my old stand by maple syrup for the real stuff the recipe calls for. And I have to admit, I’m very happy I caved. In fact, I damn near followed the recipe straight through to the letter. Ok ok, I didn’t have any sun flower seeds so I just tossed in extra almonds and pepitas (aka pumpkin seeds). And I wanted to add a little kick to my trail mix so I threw in a dash of cayenne pepper. But other than that, I was true to the 5 ingredient fix trail mix gods.

And I could NOT stop eating this stuff! Seriously, it’s like food crack, that’s good for you! And I'm not even a tree hugger (no offence to trees or their huggers) who by nature actually like this stuff! But I... just... can't... stop... eating it! I may not run out and start making costco size bags of homemade granola, but I am totally making this amazingly addictively splendid little snack again.