Cows Not Required

Mujadara

2011-08-16T15:37:00.003-04:00

Ingredients
1 cup long grain brown rice
1 cup green lentils
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1-2 T extra virgin olive oil
2 T nutritional yeast
1/4-1/2 cup cooked onions (1 medium to large size red onion, diced, cooked in olive or canola oil for 15-20 minutes, until reduced, slightly browned, and sweet)

Tools that you need
skillet/pan for cooking onions
sharp knife to cut onions
measuring spoons/cup
rice cooker with brown rice setting with rice paddle

What to do
Cook onions if not already prepared -- see directions above.
Rinse rice and lentils, if desired.
Put everything into the rice cooker, stir with rice paddle to combine, and set for brown rice cycle.
Enjoy!
You can top with additional fried onions, olives, etc. :)

Thoughts
I set this last night for delayed start to make for the girls for lunch today. It made 4 servings: 1 for Jacqui, 1 for Aji, 1 for me, and 1 for leftovers. I packed the girls' portions with an assortment of colored olives and sweet yellow pepper slices. I will report later with the girls' assessment of their Tuesday camp lunch. But, it had rice, lentils, and cooked onions, three of Jacqui's favorite foods, so hopefully she liked it! :D And they got to have their cool yellow sporknives with lunch today.

I ate mine as an early lunch (1130 today). I meant to have a few bites because I hadn't eaten much breakfast, but ended up eating the whole container. SO GOOD. I think I could add a bit more olive oil (some recipes I saw had A LOT more olive oil), but as this was my first time putting olive oil into my rice cooker, I didn't want to overdo it. Might try some more next time.

Cupcakes!

2011-03-03T18:51:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was Adrianna's second birthday -- TWO YEARS ago she was born in a March snowstorm in Brooklyn. I'm not sure where those two years have gone, but she's really grown up the past few weeks. She's talking a lot more and jumping and skipping around.

We made cupcakes for Adrianna's birthday last night. I mostly used the vanilla cupcake recipe in The Joy of Vegan Baking, but made a few changes: I used organic canola oil instead of the melted vegan margarine. I added 1 T of beet powder to make the cupcakes a deep pink. (We made these cupcakes for Jacqui's birthday in January and only used 1 tsp of beet powder. The batter was pink, but the baked cupcakes were just plain vanilla.) I used vanilla hemp milk for a little extra vanilla and lots of omega 3s and 6s. Yum.

The recipe always makes more than 12 cupcakes for me. This time, we had 18 lovely pink cupcakes.

The girls sprinkled organic powdered sugar to top the cupcakes before we stuck a number two candle into Adrianna's, sang happy birthday, and ate our cupcakes!

Today's lunch - soup!

2011-01-05T14:42:00.002-05:00

Today I ate the rest of the leftover Garbanzo/Lentil soup from Sunday. Yumm.

The picture does not do this soup justice.

Lentil and Sweet Potato Burritto Roll-ups

2011-01-05T12:42:00.007-05:00

Dinner last night was lentil and sweet potatoes. In burrito/roll-up form.

I started a baked rice dish (which I will post about later), but by the time it was in the oven for its 1/5-2 hour baking time, it was less than 30 minutes from when I wanted the girls to eat dinner. So, I looked at what I had in the kitchen and decided to make something with the few orange sweet potatoes and one large yellow/white yam that I had remaining. I used French lentils in the baked rice, so they went into the dinner too.

Ingredients
Lentils
1/2 cup dried French lentils
1 cup water
sprinkle of ground cumin

Sweet potatoes
2 small orange sweet potatoes
1 large yellow/white yam (sweet)
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp chili powder

Daiya cheese (mozzarella style)
salsa (optional)
4 long flax/whole wheat flat rectangular wraps

What to do
First, cook the lentils with the sprinkle of ground cumin. Adrianna helped by measuring and adding the lentils and water. This was the step that took the longest for us last night in dinner-making land.
At the same time, cook the sweet potatoes. (I used the microwave because I was using the oven to bake rice, but you could use the oven.) When they are cool to touch, peel and mash with the ground cumin and chili powder. (You could use more of both the cumin and chili powder if you want - I was keeping it on the less spiced side for the girls.)
To prepare the burrito-roll-ups:
Spread some of the sweet potato mixture onto a wrap. Add some warm lentils. Top with Daiya cheese (and salsa if you want -- I didn't include it for the girls). Roll up. For kid-sized burritos, cut the wrap in half before making the burrito. If the lentils aren't warm enough to melt the cheese, you can put everything in the oven for a few minutes to warm and melt. If the lentils are still warm (as ours were), they will melt the cheese.
Eat and enjoy!

Jacqui topped hers with the applesauce I made on Sunday, despite my warnings that it would make it hard to eat. It was. She ended up using a spoon to eat her roll-up, but the applesauce was a sweet addition to the sweet potatoes, spices, and lentils. Adrianna ate 1/3 of her roll-up with big bites, then needed the rest by spoon. The girls each ate 1/2 of a large burrito. I ate one large, and Dave had one large when he got home later. And we had one leftover (for someone's lunch or a snack). They were warm, easy to make, lightly spiced, and filling.

Danish Rye Bread

2011-01-03T13:41:00.005-05:00

I'm working on perfecting this bread. It's a Danish Rye bread.

My problem right now is getting the insides to fully bake without conflating.

The bread tastes wonderful, even when the insides compress a bit. Aji and I really like it. Jacqui is not such a fan. Can't please them all.

The photo is of a round loaf that I made in a cake pan. Taste was great (and the bread was devoured within two days), but it was too much dough I think to fully bake. Second time I made two long oblong loaves - reason #1: fully bake; reason #2: sandwich bread! That worked better, but the time to bake fully meant that the crust was a bit more crusty than I wanted. We've finished the first loaf (with dinner last night) and I froze the second loaf because I made wild rice bread yesterday.

As soon as I perfect the recipe, I will share it! :)

Applesauce, Garbanzo Lentil Soup, and Wild Rice Bread

2011-01-03T01:15:00.010-05:00

Happy New Year!

We finally returned home to Brooklyn Saturday night and I made a few things for eating Sunday. The new thing: applesauce! The old thing: a version of my garbanzo/lentil soup. Yum. Oh, and one more new thing: wild rice bread.

Applesauce
We had a bunch of apples that were near the end of their lives, so I made them into applesauce. It was much easier than I had expected, and quite tasty. The recipe is easy: take the apples you have, peel, core, and chop them. Add them to a big pot (I had Aji do this step) and then add water, some vegan sugar, and cinnamon. For eight apples, we added approximately two cups of water, 1/4 cup natural sugar, and 1 tsp ground cinnamon. Cook, covered, until the apples are soft. Then, puree with a handheld blender or mash with a fork. Et viola, applesauce!

Wild rice bread
I've been on a bread making kick lately. I dug out the breadmaker from storage and I've been making loaves at least once a week. I have a rye bread that I really like (but Jacqui doesn't). As soon as I figure out the water content for it, I will post that recipe. I've also been making a teff bread at my mom's that Jacqui loves. It keeps inverting though, so I need to work on it a bit. :) This bread turned out lovely and was relatively easy to make. Enjoy it sliced, with applesauce, with butter, with jam. :)

Ingredients
1 1/3 cups cold water
3 T canola oil
3 T agave nectar
2 tsp sea salt (finally got iodized sea salt!)
1/3 cup rye flour
1/3 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3 cups bread flour (+4 T)
2 tsp bread yeast
1/2 cup wild rice
little bit of soy milk
4 T sunflower seeds

What to do
I made the dough in the breadmaker and then shaped the bread and baked it in the oven.
To make the dough, out the water, oil, agave in the bread maker. Then add the salt, rye flour, oats, whole wheat flour, and bread flour. Make two indentations for the yeast. Put it on the dough cycle. When it beeps to add ingredients, add the wild rice.
When the dough is finished in the breadmaker, if it is still wet, add the extra bread flour one Tablespoon at a time (I needed to add 4T) and knead. Shape the bread into a round or oblong loaf (or you could get fancy and make three strands and braid it together, but I didn't!).
Cover with a cloth and place in a warm spot to rise. Preheat the oven to 375F. (I put the bread on top of the stove to rise using the heat of the oven as it warmed up.)
When the bread has doubled in size, brush the top with the milk and sprinkle the sunflower seeds on top.
Bake it for 25-30 minutes (or longer, as needed) until it is golden, a knife or skewer stuck in the middle comes out dry and not sticky, and the bread sounds hollow if you knock it on the bottom. My bread took about 45 minutes because my oven never made it to 375. But it was delicious once it came out! :)

Garbanzo Lentil Soup
This is a version of this soup and this soup, made on the stove (instead of the crock pot) and with orange sweet potatoes and white/yellow yams. I love this soup.

Ingredients
2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1 medium sweet onion, chopped
6-8 tiny sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 large white/yellow yam, peeled and chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 tsp ground ginger
3/4 tsp tumeric
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 cup dried green lentils, picked over
1 15 oz can of diced tomatoes, with juice
2 1/2 - 3 cups cooked organic garbanzos (with liquid)
6 cups warm or hot water
2 low-salt vegan bouillon squares

What To Do
Heat the oil in the soup pot while chopping the onion. Saute the onion for 5-10 minutes, letting it brown a little. Chop the garlic, and add it for one - two minutes. Then, add a bit of water to de-glaze the pan (get all the good brown stuff off the pan). Let this simmer while you put all the other ingredients in the soup pot.
Add the water and bouillon. Add the cooked garbanzos, chopped sweet potatoes and yam, and green lentils. Add the ginger, tumeric, cinnamon, cumin, and cardamon. Stir everything well.
Cook and cook over medium-high heat; let everything come to a boil. Reduce the heat, and let the soup cook for 45-60 minutes, stirring every so often.
Serve warm with slices of bread (you can use the bread I made or any other bread). It's also good with rice or couscous.

Happy New Year!

Dulse crackers

2010-11-15T12:57:00.005-05:00

I really wanted crackers last night. I scoured my apartment, but didn't have any besan/garbanzo flour. (And I discovered that my spelt flour had new inhabitants -- weevils! Argh!) So, lacking besan, to make the crackers more exciting, I used seaweed gomasio and dulse flakes.
(You can buy the dulse flakes on amazon and the gomasio at eden if you can't find them at a local store.)

Ingredients
1 cup organic white flour
1 cup organic whole wheat pastry flour
3/4-1 cup nutritional yeast
1 tsp sea salt
4T red/purple dulse flakes
2T seaweed gomasio
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 Earth Balance (1 stick)
1/2 cup organic original hemp milk
some GF AP flour for rolling (why? b/c it's what I had available)

What to do
Preheat oven to 385 (which is probably 365F).
Mix the dry ingredients together.
Cut in the Earth Balance until the mix is mealy.
Then add the hemp milk and mix together with your fingers.
When everything is well combined (you have a nice not-tacky ball of dough), get your rolling surface ready.
Spread a little flour down and on your rolling pin. Roll out small portions (as thick or thin as you'd like your crackers) and cut into the shapes you want for your crackers.
Place crackers on a cookie tray.
Bake for 10-12 minutes (less time for thinner crackers).
Cool.
Eat.

Verdict: needs more salt without the besan. But still good. :) I ate a bunch for dessert last night and left the rest for the girls to munch on this week.

Sweet Potato Squash & Garbanzo Soup with Kasha

2010-11-15T12:28:00.003-05:00

Yesterday's dinner was a hearty, thick stew. I made the soup separate from the kasha, and served them together, making a thick, stick-to-your-ribs stew that was quite filling. I had forgotten how much I liked kasha. You could always cook the kasha with the soup, but I liked the separateness of the two. I think it led to the vibrant colors: This soup was very brightly colored -- yellow and orange vegetables in deep yellow broth, bright greens, red kasha.

Ingredients
Soup:
2 sweet potatoes, scrubbed and cubed (from the farmers' market)
1 sweet yellow onion, chopped (from MOM's)
1/2 head of garlic, minced (from the farmers' market)
1 long delicata squash, cut in half, seeds scooped out, and chopped (ditto)
1 large gold potato, scrubbed and cubed (not Yukon, I can't remember the variety that we picked at the market on Saturday)
1 head of greens, thinly sliced (from Kira's farm stand. She said to use it like spinach, so I did)
1 cup vegetable broth
1 T extra virgin olive oil
3 cups water
1 cup garbanzos + 1 cup garbanzo cooking liquid
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp poultry seasoning

Kasha:
1 cup dried kasha
2 cups water
1/4 tsp sea salt

What to do
For the soup:
As you cut the sweet potatoes and potatoes, put them in a large soup pot with the water and vegetable broth.
Add the garlic and onions as you cut them.
Add the garbanzos and cooking water, the olive oil, and the herbs. (Because I knew that I was going to use some salt in the kasha, I didn't put any in the soup. You might want to put some in the soup.)
Cook, covered, over medium heat until the vegetables are soft and the broth is a lovely deep yellow.
When the vegetables are soft enough for you, turn off the heat and add the greens. Cover the pot again and let the soup cook the greens for you.
Keep the pot covered until you are ready to serve.

For the kasha:
Rinse the kasha well and remove any blackened grains. Place in pot with 2 cups of water and seal salt. Stir, cook until all the water is absorbed. I did this right before serving, so that the kasha was warm.

To serve:
Place some kasha in a bowl, then ladle soup on top. Sprinkle with nutritional yeast. You can serve it like that or mix the kasha into the soup, making it a stew.
Enjoy!

Squash with Root Vegetable Lentil Stew

2010-11-08T13:12:00.005-05:00

Sunday dinnertime. My favorite squash and Jacqui's root vegetables, all carefully chosen at the farmers' market, come out to play for dinner.

First, the squash. Second, the stew...lots of white vegetables. with brightly colored skins and some gold beets to color the broth.

Ingredients
1 large blue-skinned (orange flesh) squash
1 cup live oat groats
1 cup green lentils
8 cups water
3 small white onions, chopped
3 small yellow beets, peeled and chopped
3 small Yukon potatoes, scrubbed and chopped
1 purple turnip, scrubbed and chopped
1 purple daikon, scrubbed and chopped
1/2 black turnip, scrubbed and chopped
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1/2 tsp sea salt
dried sage
dried rosemary
dried thyme
1 bulb roasted garlic
1/4 cup (or more) nutritional yeast

What to do
First, I cut up a large squash. Jacqui helped me scrape the seeds out. Then, we placed it in the over at 400F for 40 minutes (until soft enough to be pierced with a fork). Jacqui asked why I was making holes in it -- to see if it's ready to eat! :D If you don't have roasted garlic on hand (for the stew), cut the top off a bulb, wrap it in aluminum foil, and put it in the oven with the squash. It will be ready when the squash is done.

The squash will be finished baking before the soup is done cooking, so it makes a great first course/appetizer. Jacqui and Aji, like their mother, *love* all things squash, so they really ate it right up. You can add some vegan butter if you want. Jacqui actually ate almost the whole squash (and seriously, this was a large squash) by herself. Squash lovers outnumber the non-squash lovers in my home!

Second, while the squash was baking, we started the stew. In a large soup pot, add the water, lentils (rinsed), and live oat groats. (Any whole grain will do here. I used the oat groats because that's what I had on hand, fresh from the farmers' market.)
While the lentils and oat groats start cooking, wash and chop the vegetables (onions, beets, turnips, daikon, potatoes). Add them to the soup pot as you chop them. Chop as large or as small as you'd like and your kids will eat. :) Add the pressed garlic at this point too. (But not the roasted garlic.)
Add dried sage, rosemary, and thyme. I used fresh herbs that we bought a few weeks ago at the farmers' market and dried. I took the dried leaves off the stems and crushed them in my hands before adding. Jacqui became an expert at this. Add as much or as little of the herbs as you'd like.
When the vegetables are soft and the lentils and oat groats fully cooked, add the roasted garlic (just squeeze the cloves right in) and the nutritional yeast. Reduce the heat, stir to combine, and let the stew cook on low for a few minutes to combine the flavors. If you want some more herbs, add them now.
Serve in large bowls and enjoy!

Red Beet and Lentil Soup

2010-11-05T11:20:00.004-04:00

Last night I made a very RED soup for dinner for me and the girls. I used yellow and orange carrots, red onion, red beets, and purple-skinned potatoes from the farmers' market, red lentils from bulk (Fairway or MOM's), yellow lentils from my mom (she gifted me with these two really cool lentil packages -- yellow and beluga -- last time I visited), and left-over brown rice for the soup. The girls both ate it for dinner and I had two bowls (one with rice and one without). It was so nice to get to cook again. And use up some of the lovely produce that's been living in my fridge, neglected, while I work away the days.

Ingredients
10 cups hot water
1 cup red (orange) lentils
1 cup yellow lentils (or another cup of red lentils)
1 orange carrot (peel left on)
1 yellow carrot (peel left on)
1 red (purple) onion
2 red beets, peeled
3 purple-skinned potatoes (peel left on)
1 tsp dried minced garlic
1 tsp dried dill
1 cup cooked brown rice

What to do
This soup was souper easy.
In the food processor, chop up the onion and carrots together.
Dice the potatoes and beets on a cutting board.
Then, in one pot, add: water, lentils, potatoes, beets, carrots, onion, garlic, and dill.
Cook until the vegetables are soft and the lentils have fallen apart.
Puree the soup.
Stir in the brown rice and serve!

Polenta Dinner

2010-07-19T15:22:00.004-04:00

Friday night before we began our long long car trip to Maryland (i.e. Grammy and Gung-gung's house), I made up a polenta and beans dinner for us all (me, the girls, and Dave). We ate all the polenta. Adrianna couldn't get enough; Jacqui ate pretty quickly; and Dave and I ate up our full portions (plus an extra one for Dave). I gave each of the girls 1 1/2 pieces of polenta, giving Jacqui beans only and Adrianna beans and sauce. Two pieces each for me and Dave, with an extra piece waiting for Dave when his plate was clean.

The polenta is from my earlier-in-the-week cauliflower and polenta effort. For the bean sauce, I used some mushroom and olive marinara sauce mixed with coco rose beans, heated slightly and spooned on. On the side, farm fresh cukes. I fork-cut up Jacqui's and Adrianna's portions to make it easier for them to eat by themselves. It was a quick and easy dinner, perfect for getting the girls to eat quickly so that we could be on the road before 8pm.

Marinated Tempeh and Cauliflower Polenta

2010-07-15T11:17:00.008-04:00

When I got home last night, I made up a quick marinade for some SoyBoy soy tempeh (cut into four triangles). After the girls were finally asleep, I cooked the tempeh, and started chopping cauliflower for my polenta.

Jacqui is in the final stages of potty-training. She wears underwear during the day and hasn't had an awake accident in more than a week. Yay! The last stage is sleep. Some days she wakes up dry from her nap, some days she wakes up wet. Of course, the days she wakes up wet are the days I foolishly allow her to nap without a diaper over her underwear. Sigh. She has yet to wake up dry from overnight sleep. And, over the last week, her body has determined that she needs to poop between 8:30 and 9:00 pm. When she should be in bed, going to sleep. Instead, she is sitting on the potty, pooping. "Mommy, I want to be a big girl, I don't want to pee and poop in my diaper." What can you say to that entreaty? "Ok, ok, go sit on the potty." Even if it's the third time since going to bed that she's asking to go. Even if I'm the only one home with the girls and Adrianna is on the verge of falling asleep. Even if I'm starving because I haven't gotten to eat yet. I just can't say no to the "I don't want to pee or poop in my diaper because I want to be a big girl" plea. Bedtime is just becoming later and later and dinner time for me is becoming much more of a Spanish-time dinner... but I don't get an afternoon siesta. Sigh.

I based the marinade on a tempeh marinade recipe from Veganomicon. I omitted the maple syrup (didn't have any) and only used 1/2 the liquid smoke. I used 1/3 of a bouillon square plus 3/4 cup hot water to make the vegetable broth. The tempeh marinated for a bit more than an hour, then I cooked it in my handy dandy (but a little too large) non-stick skillet. I used some of the marinade to cook with the tempeh, but saved half of it to use again for marinated tempeh sticks. (I cut up another block of tempeh, into small finger-sized strips, and put them into the marinade and the whole container into the fridge last night. I'll cook them up tonight, so the girls have something new for lunch on Friday.)

As I cooked and ate my tempeh (yum yum), I started the polenta. I've been dreaming of making polenta for some time now. (Is is odd that I dream of making certain food? I don't think it's too odd...much better than some of my other dreams!) My first attempt to cook polenta was thwarted when the polenta had grown a thick layer of green mold on the top. Eck! I took it back to the farmers market and got a new bag. No mold on this one. Phew!

I based the polenta on a recipe from Veganomicon (Broccoli Polenta). I subbed cauliflower for the broccoli -- although I didn't have any broccoli, I had a huge head of cauliflower waiting to be eaten in the fridge. :) Four cups chopped and I still had enough for 3-4 more. Instead, I ate maybe half raw while cooking the polenta. So I've got a little bit of raw cauliflower left in the fridge for another night. I chose to use my brownie pan for the cooked polenta -- after taking out some of the polenta-cauliflower slop to eat immediately! I topped it with some large sea salt and nutritional yeast. Yum!

Here's my pan of cauliflower polenta. It looks eggy, no? The bowl of freshly cooked polenta really looked eggy to me. After the pan cooled a bit, I put it into the fridge to firm up. This morning before I left for work, I cut into squares and gave Dave directions on how to make it for lunch. Fry 2-3 squares in the skillet, add a little olive oil if necessary. Top with tomato sauce and coco rose or white beans (both are sitting cooked in the fridge). The girls will have a yummy lunch!

Lavender Pancakes

2010-07-10T10:32:00.005-04:00

I found a recipe for lavender pancakes earlier this week. The girls and I had bought a bag of baking and tea-making lavender from Lavender By The Bay, a farm out on Long Island that sells on Saturdays at our farmers market. It's been sitting in our kitchen, waiting for something wonderful to make. I decided that this morning was the morning to try the lavender pancakes for breakfast.

I made some adjustments to the original recipe. My sister and niece had gone through a gluten-free (GF) phase. When it ended, I inherited their leftovers, including a HUGE bag of GF all-purpose flour. I didn't have any wheat all-purpose flour, so I used the GF AP flour.

Probably because of the GF AP flour, I found that I needed to add quite a bit more milk, and the batter still wasn't as runny as I expected it to be. When I spooned the batter onto the pan, I had to spread it out to make the pancakes. The batter was too viscous to go anywhere on its own. You can see in the photo above the results of not immediately spreading the batter as I spooned it onto the pan...the center circles are the plops of batter, the rest is the result of my expert spreading. :).

Still, the pancakes were yummy, if a little stretchy (again, I think a result of the GF AP flour). The lavender flowers added a subtle flavor when the pancakes were eaten right after cooking. The flavor was much stronger and more pronounced at lunchtime/dinnertime when Jacqui and I finished off the remaining three pancakes that weren't devoured by us and Dave at breakfast.

Here's my version of Vegan Guinea Pig's lavender pancakes.

Ingredients
1 ¼ cup gluten-free all purpose flour
2 T dark brown sugar
1 T lavender flowers
¼ tsp fine sea salt
4 tsp baking powder
¼ cup plain soy yogurt
¼ cup strawberry applesauce
1 ½ cup vanilla hemp milk
¼ cup organic canola oil

What to do
Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. (I had to smash up the brown sugar by hand because it had started to gel into balls, probably from the humidity in NYC.)
In a separate bowl, whisk the well ingredients together well.
Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, mixing well until you have a smooth batter.
Heat your pancake pan over medium heat. Using a ¼ cup, spoon the batter onto the pan. I had to then spread the batter out with the back of a spoon to make pancakes. (Otherwise, these would have been more like drop biscuits or scones.) Cook until the top is all bubbly and starting to dry, then flip over. The bottom should be a lovely golden brown. If it's still pale, then let it cook a little longer on that side before flipping.
Serve the pancakes with maple syrup for dipping or all alone.

The recipe made 15 4-in diameter pancakes for me, all of which were promptly eaten, leaving none to freeze for another day.

Smoothies

2010-07-07T14:13:00.004-04:00

We are loving smoothies in the hot heat of New York this summer. I'm sharing a few of our recent recipes below. Each makes enough smoothie for the four of us to enjoy for breakfast or lunch. :) Just blend all the ingredients together, pour into glasses, and enjoy with or without straws.

Strawberry Banana Hemp Smoothie
This is a lovely pink smoothie with a bit of a tang from the cranberry pom juice.
1 cup vanilla hemp milk
1 cup cranberry pomegranate juice
2 frozen bananas
1 cup frozen strawberries
2 heaping spoonfuls ground golden flax
1 avocado

Blueberry Banana Green Smoothie
This is a beautiful purple smoothie with lots of protein and vitamin C.
1 cup vanilla oat milk
1 cup green juice
2 frozen bananas
1 frozen kiwi
1 cup frozen blueberries
2 heaping spoonfuls ground golden flax
1 heaping spoonful soy protein powder
1 avocado

Pesto!

2010-07-07T13:38:00.003-04:00

On Saturday, we used the large (and I do mean LARGE) bunch of basil we bought at the farmers market to make PESTO!!!!

Pesto is so easy to make, and so tasty. Store-bought pesto always has cheese in it, so if you want vegan pesto, you've got to make it yourself. All you need is a food processor (or high powered blender) and some ice cube trays, and you're ready to put some pesto away for later.

(image from photobucket)

Ingredients
6 cups loosely packed basil leaves (rinsed and patted dry)
3/4 cup pine nuts
6-8 garlic cloves
1 1/2 tsp coarse sea salt
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

What to do
Combine the basil, pine nuts, garlic, salt, nutritional yeast, and olive oil in a food processor fitted with a metal blade. (I tried to make this in the blender first, but the blender didn't cut it. Literally.) Process until smooth and creamy, scraping down the sides to ensure everything is processed.
Using a spatula, fill ice cube trays with pesto and cover tightly with plastic wrap and freeze. Keep enough unfrozen for whatever meal you want to make with it immediately.

This recipe can be halved or doubled, depending on how much basil you have on hand. You can also add more or less of the salt and nutritional yeast, as you prefer the taste. You will also notice that my recipe has lots of garlic. I love garlic. Jacqui's first comment was that the pesto was spicy. Not so spicy that she didn't like it, but spicy enough that she let Adrianna have the next three spoonfuls while she thought about the spiciness.

Saturday night, I mixed pesto with brown Basmati rice and garbanzos for dinner. Yum. The girls loved it, and it was such a quick and easy dinner for them.

Last night, we made pasta (brown rice pasta for the girls and tofu shiratake pasta for me and Dave) with white beans and pesto. The brown rice pasta was delicious with the pesto, as were the beans. I threw some grape tomatoes in with Dave's and my meal. The tofu shiratake pasta was not very good. It was rubbery and made me want to gag. I ended up eating around it -- just eating the tomatoes and beans with pesto -- and filling up on the fresh gigantic head of cauliflower that I steamed for dinner too. I think I ate half of the cauliflower myself. It was probably a foot across. I had to steam it in three batches last night. So delicious. Fresh vegetables from the farmers market just taste better. Ahh...

Smoothies and Farmers Market Lunch

2010-07-04T08:36:00.004-04:00

Saturday is my day with the girls. Dave was out at kung fu all day long.

Breakfast
For breakfast, we made strawberry banana smoothies. Jacqui has been asking for smoothies for breakfast every day lately. I think it's the heat. We had been making banana smoothies with whatever type of juice we had around for a few days because we didn't have any other frozen fruit. But Friday, we made a special trip to the store to pick up some frozen strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, so yesterday we were prepared for yummy smoothie goodness.

Ingredients
5 pieces (1/2 banana each) frozen banana
1 cup oatmilk
1 cup orange-pineapple juice
two heaping scoops soy protein
3/4 avocado
1 1/2 cup frozen strawberries

What to do
Place the milk and juice in the blender first, then the remaining ingredients. Blend until smooth and serve in glasses (plastic for the little girls). Enjoy!

Lunch
After breakfast, we took our regular Saturday trip to the market. (When I ask Jacqui where we should bike to, the market is always her first-choice destination, every day of the week. Too bad our market is only on Saturdays.) The organic woman-run farm we love (Evolutionary Organics) had the cutest selection of fresh, small zucchini and summer squash. I made the mistake of letting the girls pick some, and ended up spending $10 on squash. We also picked up a napa cabbage head and some vitamin greens. At another farmer's stand, we got lots of fresh berries (raspberries and blackberries) -- on special for 4 boxes for $10. Adrianna and Jacqui stuffed their faces with the berries before we even bought any. For the rest of our trip around the market, Adrianna's face was stained black and red (as were her hands) from all the berry goodness.
After purchasing the delicious berries, we went to play in the park for a bit. And eat more berries. And play. After playing for a while, we walked back through the market, picking up two humongous heads of white cauliflower (they barely fit in the fridge last night), a peach for lunch, two greenhouse tomatoes, and a large bunch of fresh basil. Homeward!

Farmers Market Lunch
Ingredients
4-5 small summer squash, sliced into rounds
1 large fresh tomato, chopped
1 T extra virgin olive oil
sea salt
black pepper
1 small red spicy pepper (from our window garden!)
1 cup cooked garbanzos

What to do
heat the oil and then saute the sliced squash. Add the red pepper, tomato, salt, and black pepper. Then add the garbanzos. Saute and cook until the squash is soft. Serve!

It's so easy and Jacqui and Adrianna loved it! So much fun picking your own lunch at the market and helping mom make it up.

Moroccan Garbanzo and Lentil Soup

2010-07-01T11:32:00.003-04:00

I love garbanzo beans. ♥ Love love love. ♥ And lentils. ♥ Love love love. ♥

Jacqui loves sweet potatoes. She asks for them all the time, and tells me that she ♥ LOVES ♥ sweet potatoes.

So it was no surprise that this morning, when I asked her what she wanted in today's soup, that she asked for sweet potatoes. She choose sweet potatoes over white potatoes, yellow potatoes, green peppers, and green beans -- all vegetables she truly enjoys.

This soup is a sweet potato version of a soup I made back in April. The recipe is a mix up of several recipes -- one from my mom and sister and a few lentil and garbanzo bean soup recipes that I've found over the years. I used ground ginger this morning because I didn't have any fresh ginger in the apartment.

Ingredients
2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1 medium sweet onion, chopped
1 large sweet potato, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 cup dried lentils, picked over
1 15 oz can of diced tomatoes, with juice
2 1/2 - 3 cups cooked organic garbanzos
6 cups warm or hot water
2 low-salt vegan bouillon squares

What To Do
Heat the oil while chopping the onion. Saute the onion for 5-10 minutes, letting it brown a little. Chop the garlic, and add it for one - two minutes. Then, add a bit of water to de-glaze the pan (get all the good brown stuff off the pan). Let this simmer while you put all the other ingredients in the soup pot.
Jacqui unwrapped the bouillon and put the 2 cubes into the pot, then helped me put in the 6 cups of water. Jacqui and Adrianna then helped me add the cooked garbanzos (cooked last night with 2 bay leaves), chopped sweet potatoes, and green lentils.
Add the ginger, tumeric, cinnamon, cumin, and cardamon. Add the onion, garlic, and whatever water is still there with them. Stir everything well.
Place over medium-high heat and let everything come to a boil. Reduce the heat, and let the soup cook for 45-60 minutes, stirring every so often.

Tofu Pancakes Stuffed with Mushrooms and Spinach

2010-06-30T17:12:00.004-04:00

After talking to my work cafe's chef about Vegan Brunch and the tofu omelet recipe that made me buy the book, I decided to make them for dinner last night.

I used the boxed silken soft tofu because that was the only thing the Met supermarket had. I also used 1/2 the black salt that the recipe calls for, arrowroot powder instead of corn starch, and the two garlic cloves suggested in the recipe.

Jacqui and Adrianna helped me get all the ingredients together into the food processor and helped me wash the mushrooms for the stuffing. Jacqui said that she *loved* each ingredient as we put it into the food processor.

Adrianna decided that I *had* to hold her as I was making the pancakes (as Jacqui called them) and making the filling.

Filling ingredients
one large box of white organic mushrooms, rinsed and chopped
1 T olive oil
fresh rosemary, tarragon, and oregano from my mom's garden, chopped
fresh spinach
grated vegan cheddar-style cheese

What to do
Heat the olive oil over medium heat while you start the first tofu pancake. Spread the pancake thin using a spatula.
Add the mushrooms and the chopped fresh herbs, and stir fry. The mushrooms will let out their juices, keep stirring and cooking until those have evaporated. Stir to make sure that nothing burns.
Make all of the tofu pancakes, placing them between two plates to keep them warm while you are finishing up the rest of the pancakes and the filling.
Jacqui and Dave grated the vegan cheese up.
To make the stuffed pancakes: put fresh spinach, mushroom mixture, and vegan cheese on one half of a pancake. Fold over, then heat over medium heat for 2-3 minutes, to let everything mush together a little. Serve and enjoy!

Outcome
Dave really liked these; I made his without the vegan cheese because he's a little wary of it. Jacqui loved the tofu pancakes and ate hers up without any help! Adrianna, once we broke the spinach up into smaller pieces, ate up a bunch too. Yay! :)

Two Bean Sweet Potato Chili

2010-06-29T16:25:00.002-04:00

Last night I wanted to make a chili for me and Dave to eat. But for some reason, I didn't really want tomatoes. And I had some sweet potatoes that I scored from my mom's kitchen. I think this dish can be called chili with its spices -- if white chili exists, then tomatoes certainly can't be a requirement!

Ingredients
1 T extra virgin organic olive oil
1 medium organic sweet onion, chopped
2 large sweet potatoes, scrubbed and cubed
1/4 cup water
1 can organic black beans, rinsed and drained
1 can organic pinto beans, rinsed and drained
ground cumin
ground cinnamon
paprika
Mexican chili powder

What to do
While trying to get Jacqui to finish her dinner, chop the onion.
Heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the chopped onion and saute for 5 minutes.
Add the sweet potatoes and the water. Add some cumin, cinnamon, paprika, and chili powder (to taste). Cover the pot and let the sweet potatoes steam.
When the sweet potatoes are steamed and bright orange, add the beans and some more spices. Stir to mix everything together well. Cover and let it all cook together for another 10 minutes or so. (Or, like me, until Jacqui finished her sesame green tea noodles.) Taste again, and see if you want to add any more of the spices. I added a little more chili powder and cumin because Dave and I were going to eat this dish, not Jacqui. :)
I let this sit (covered) until I had gotten the girls to sleep (45 minutes or so), but you could eat it right away too!
We ate it with chunks of a whole wheat baguette I picked up on the way home. I found it very comforting and filling -- just what I was looking for last night!

Beans and Tomatoes Soup (what else?)

2010-06-22T22:25:00.004-04:00

After a week of not being home much because I was working until 2am almost every night, I made soup on Sunday night/Monday morning for the girls. Dave had admonished me to leave him with food that they would eat, nothing new. (I left beets for them last week. Jacqui loves beets and ate hers. Adrianna was trying them for the first time. She threw them across the kitchen. Hence the admonition.)

We got home from MD at 2:30 in the morning. After unloading the car and getting the girls back to bed, I made this soup up. Finished it in the morning as I left for work. The girls ate it for lunch and dinner yesterday. Jacqui really liked it and was excited to tell me that she ate it for lunch and dinner. Adrianna ate it; she's not much for talking, so I'm not sure how much she liked it. But she ate it and didn't throw it across the kitchen, so score one for SOUP!

Slow cooker, I love you.

Ingredients
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 sweet, yellow onion, diced
1 1/2 - 2 cups of cooked garbanzos (I used cooked because I had them in the fridge, but you could also use one 15 oz can, drained)
1 can organic diced tomatoes with juices
2 cans of water, plus extra if needed
1 vegan low-salt bouillon square
1 cup sliced zucchini
black pepper and sea salt to taste
1 tsp dried thyme
2 bay leaves
two handfuls green lentils (~1/2 cup)
2 handfuls brown Jasmine rice (~1/2 cup)

What to do
At night, plug in and heat up the slow cooker while you are dicing the onion. Put the olive oil in and let it warm up. Add the onion, and let it cook for a few minutes before adding the other ingredients.
Add the garbanzos, tomatoes, water, bouillon square, zucchini, pepper, salt, thyme, and bay leaves. Cook on low.
In the morning (5-6 hours), add the lentils and rice. Season with salt and/or pepper as needed.
At lunchtime, enjoy the hot soup!

Italian Provencal Lentils and Pasta

2010-06-09T14:33:00.004-04:00

It's been a long time since I've taken the time to write about what I'm cooking. First my excuse was work (too much, not at home enough to cook), then my excuse was time (spending it with the kids instead of at the computer), then my excuse was traveling (traveling means not cooking, right?). Enough excuses.

I got home from work in time to make dinner with the kids last night. I made a version of a lentil dish that I've been making regularly recently. I like lentils because they cook quickly and don't require me to remember to soak them the night before!

Here is a shot of last night's meal.

Unlike my previous versions of this dish, the lentils can stand alone. I've been making this dish with red lentils, making it much more of a sauce that coats the pasta and much less of a dish on its own. Making the dish with the green lentils totally changed it up. I also used only 1/2 cup of lentils last night; normally, I've been making the dish with 1+ cup. Next time I make the red lentil version, I'll post about it. (I made it the morning of our trip out to Cali, put it in to-go containers, added it to the diaper bag, and Jacqui and I ate it on the flight for lunch/dinner.)

Ingredients
1 T olive oil
1 red onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup dry green lentils, washed and picked over
2 cups water plus one low-salt vegan bouillon square -- or 2 cups vegetable brother if you have it
1 can diced tomatoes
2 tsp provencal spice blend
brown rice pasta

What to do
Set a pot of water (with salt or olive oil, as you like) to boil. This is for the pasta. When the water is boiling, add the pasta and stir to keep it from sticking together. The pasta I made said to boil for 1-2 minutes (I boiled it for 2 minutes), then turn the heat off and cover for 20 minutes. Worked well for me! (My family was recently on a gluten-free kick. On our trip to Maryland this past weekend, I inherited the left-over gluten-free booty, including this rice pasta from Tinkyada.)
Meanwhile, chop the onion, garlic, and carrot. Heat a deep pot over medium heat and add the olive oil. Add the onion and saute for a few minutes, until fragrant. Add the garlic and saute for 2 minutes more. Add the carrots, water plus bouillon/broth, spices, and lentils, and stir well. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer on lower heat for 15 minutes.
Uncover and add the can of tomatoes plus juices. Cook for another 20-30 minutes, until the lentils are tender enough for your taste. If you think it's too liquidy, just up the heat for a few minutes (don't let it burn!).
Serve by putting pasta in a bowl and spooning the lentils over top.

Outcome
Adrianna fed herself (!) the pasta and lentils using her fingers and spoon. The tomato pieces were a little too large for her. Jacqui ate some of the lentils and pasta by herself, but then succumbed to the "Mommy, help me" routine. She ate up all the pasta and lentils in her bowl and would have eaten more had I given her a larger bowl. (I filled her bowl up to the top with food last night!) I ate up two (small) bowls pretty quickly myself...the second was accompanied by a glass of a new wine (Yellow + Blue malbec) I picked up to try -- vegan and organic and environmentally friendly Yellow + Blue. Dave's saving the lentil leftovers for the girls' dinner tonight.

Not Quite Banana Muffins

2010-04-20T16:50:00.004-04:00

I tried to make muffins over the weekend -- Saturday morning to be exact. But I forgot a **crucial** ingredient -- the rising agent! So, instead of fluffy muffins, I had compact, but delicious, things. I don't really have a word for them. But I just finished off the last one. Yummy.

Not Quite Banana Muffins
Ingredients
1 cup whole spelt flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
4 ripe bananas, mashed
1/3 cup organic canola oil
1/3 cup turbinado sugar
1/4 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup pepitas

What I did
Preheat oven to 350F.
Put the flours and salt into a bowl, let Jacqui mix.
Mash the bananas in another (bigger) bowl.
Give Adrianna her own bowl and a spoon to mix her imaginary not-quite-muffin-batter.
Add the oil and sugar to the mashed bananas, let Jacqui mix well. Add the water and vanilla, and let her mix well again.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and fold everything together. Once it's mostly mixed, let Jacqui mix some more. Make sure to incorporate all the dry ingredients.
Chop the pecans. Let Jacqui add in the chopped pecans and pepitas.
Have Jacqui (is this child labor???) line the muffin tins. Spoon the not-quite-muffin batter into the tins. Bake for 30 minutes at 350F.
This made 16 not-quite-muffins for me. The first set, I put in as if I had remembered the rising agent, expecting some vertical growth. After there was none in the first batch, I just topped the second batch out to the top of the liners, so I only had enough batter for four more. I filled the other muffin-holes with water and baked for 30 minutes too.

Outcome
Not muffins. No rising. Looked really funky. Taste: Delicious! Jacqui ate them. Adrianna ate them. I ate them. Even Dave ate them! Woo hoo! And we finished them in just a few days. Next time, though, I'm going to try to remember the rising agent. Muffins, here we come!

(If you want to make them rise, I think I meant to add 1 or 1 1/2 tsp baking soda to the dry ingredients. Try it out. Let me know if that works!)

Vegan Sprouted Spelt Lentil and Garbanzo Stew

2010-04-12T22:36:00.007-04:00

This will be dinner (or lunch) for the girls tomorrow. It's supposed to be a cold day tomorrow, so I thought a good hearty soup/stew would be welcome. This is made in a slow cooker.

I bought whole spelt on our last trip to Maryland. On Saturday night, I soaked a cup of it, draining the spelt on Sunday, and left it in the pot. Today (Monday), I left it out for the whole day, and the spelt sprouted! I was planning on using it to make spelt minestrone, so the soup is now sprouted spelt minestrone.

Ingredients
1 cup whole spelt grain
2 T extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 large yellow onion, chopped
4 carrots, sliced
3 ribs celery, chopped
1 green (or yellow) zucchini, sliced and quartered
1 cup frozen green beans
1 can diced tomatoes with liquid
2 squares vegan low-sodium bouillon
water
3/4 cup dried green lentils
3/4-1 cup dried garbanzos -- 2 cups cooked (*updated)
2 handfuls pine nuts

What to do
Sprout the grain (or don't, but at least soak it overnight).
Put the slow cooker on high. Add the olive oil, onion, garlic, carrots, celery, zucchini, beans, tomatoes and tomato liquid, bouillon, and enough water to cover. Mix together. Pick through the lentils, rinse, and add. Toss in two handfuls of pine nuts. Cook for 2-3 hours on high, then switch to low and cook overnight. In the morning, turn the slow cooker to warm.
Meanwhile, soak the garbanzos overnight. Cook in a pressure cooker in the morning, and add 1 to 1 1/2 cups garbanzos to the slow cooker. (This is my tomorrow-morning-step.)
(I'm actually soaking 1 1/2 cups dried garbanzos to make extra to freeze for future meals. 1 1/2 cups dried garbanzos should cook up to at least 4 1/2 cups garbanzos, maybe more.)

More tomorrow on this soup.

Update: This is not a soup. It is a stew. A thick and hearty stew. I also updated the amount of garbanzos -- Jacqui and I decided to add two cups of cooked beans this morning after I pressured cooked the beans. We both thought that the stew needed more of these super delish beans!

I renamed this stew. It's not really a minestrone anymore. It's a pure stew. I brought some for lunch, so a blackberry photo will be added shortly. :)

Update: photos up. As usual, my blackberry photos aren't too good. The soup tastes better than it looks. It's a little tangy, and quite filling. This thermos filled me up for lunch.

Vegan Cranberry Orange Scones

2010-04-12T16:29:00.003-04:00

I made scones yesterday for breakfast with Jacqui's help. Just a few ingredients (that you probably already have in your kitchen) mixed together and baked at 425F for 12 minutes. Jacqui ate the batter, Dave ate two, and even our visiting (non-vegan) friend ate two and liked them! :)

Ingredients
Dry
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole spelt flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp orange zest
2/3 cup chopped pecans and walnuts
2/3 cup dried cranberries
Wet
1/2 cup maple syrup
6 T sunflower oil
3/4 cup orange juice (I juiced our remaining orange for ~ 1/2 cup and then filled it up with orange-mango juice)

What to do
Preheat the oven to 425F.
Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Total flour should be 3 cups. I broke it out into 1/1/1 because I wanted to use spelt flour, I wanted to use whole wheat flour, and I had 1 cup of all-purpose flour remaining in my bag. I think that, to keep the scones from becoming too heavy, you'll not want to use more than 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour, but it might work with 2 cups. Chop the nuts (I used 1/2 cup chopped pecans and 1/6 cup chopped walnuts for two reasons: 1. I only had 1/2 cup pecans and 2. I am allergic to walnuts, but can generally handle them in small quantities). Stir in the cranberries and chopped nuts.
Juice orange or measure out the boxed orange juice. Mix (whisk) the wet ingredients in a smaller bowl.
Add the dry to the wet and stir to combine. Jacqui did this step mostly by herself. I had to mix in the bottom/last flour myself, but she was able to do this really well herself.
Place parchment paper on your baking sheet. Using one or two spoons, spoon the mixture and drop it onto the paper. Put 6 - 8 dropped scones on the sheet, then bake for 10-12 minutes (12 minutes did it for me, but I checked at 10 just to be sure). Drop 6 - 8 scones on the sheet again, and bake for 12 minutes, this time setting off one of the alarms in the apt and waking anyone still sleeping. (But really, who is still sleeping at 8-something in the morning on a beautiful Sunday???) Place on a cooling rack and let them cool for a few minutes before devouring.
Serve plain, or with some vegan butter or jelly or maple syrup.

We enjoyed these plain. They are just sweet enough to not need anything else. Jacqui had filled up on the uncooked dough/batter and didn't eat much of her baked scone, but Dave, Ryan, and I ate two each. Yum yum yum.

Not food I made....

2010-04-09T16:14:00.003-04:00

Today, Adrianna and Jacqui went to the doctor. I had told Jacqui about the trip last night, and how Adrianna was going to get a shot. Jacqui asked about the shot all morning, and kept telling me that "I want Adrianna to get her shot." Cute? Not so sure. When I asked her if she wanted a shot, she cried, "No No No! No Shot!"

Jacqui got a shot this morning. So, while Adrianna slept off the effects of her shot, we scootered over to Washington Ave and got some vegan pistachio ice cream for me and Jacqui to share and some vegan pasta pie for Jacqui to have for lunch. The ice cream was yummy, and Jacqui ate a cone for the first time! Not sure how much of the pasta pie she ate after all that ice cream, but she got a shot. I think she can have ice cream instead of lunch.... :)

And last night, I decided to do something new with the girls before bedtime. I got them into clean diapers and then gave them each a massage with organic baby massage oil. I used to do this all the time with Jacqui when she was first born, but at some point, we stopped. And never really started with Adrianna.

Jacqui said that Adrianna should have the first massage -- she's such a generous older sister! Then it was Jacqui's turn. Then pajama time. Then, Jacqui said that she wanted to give me a massage too. So, she had me lie down on the blanket I had put on the ground for her and Adrianna, and proceeded to try to wipe some oil from her tummy onto her hands, and then massage my feet (after first tickling them) and my hands/arms (again, first tickling them). Such a sweet girl! :)

Vegan Lentil Soups

2010-04-01T12:36:00.008-04:00

I made these two soups last week. Both were big hits with the girls -- and with me! Both are lentil-based soups, made in the slow cooker. Perfect for days when you need a home-cooked meal, but just don't have the time (or won't be home) to make it when you want/need to eat.

Lentil Soup with Kale Ribbons
Ingredients
olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
3 large yellow carrots, peeled and chopped
1 1/2 cups dried green lentils, picked over and rinsed
6 cups warm or hot water
3 low-salt vegan boullion squares
1 T Bragg's sauce
remains of a bunch of kale, stemmed

What To Do
Before going to work on Sunday afternoon, heat a saute pan over medium heat. When warm, add the olive oil. When the oil is warm, add the chopped onion, celery, and carrots. Saute unil soft, adding water if needed, approximately 8-10 minutes.
Add the water and vegetable boullion to the slow cooker, mix to break up/in the boullion. Add the sauteed veggies to slow cooker. Add the lentils and Bragg's. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.
Meanwhile, roll the kale and cut thin strips. Boil a salted pot of water, add the kale when it is boiling, and cook the kale for 5-6 minutes. Drain in a colander.
Leave the kale next to the slow cooker for Dave to mix into the soup before feeding it to the girls for dinner.

This soup was a big hit with both Jacqui and Adrianna. Woo hoo! :)

Lentil and Garbanzo Soup
Ingredients
olive oil
1 medium red onion, chopped
2 yellow carrots, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp groun cumin
1/4 tsp ground cardamon
1 cup dried lentils, picked over and rinsed
1/2 large can of diced tomatoes, without juice (save other half to make soup again)
1 can organic garbanzos, drained and rinsed
6 cups warm or hot water
3 low-salt vegan boullion sqaures

What To Do
When I get home late Sunday night from work, and know that I won't be getting a meal tomorrow unless I make it tonight...heat a saute pan over medium heat. When warm, add the olive oil. When the oil is warm, add the chopped onion, garlic, and carrots. Cover and cook unil soft, adding water if needed. Add the ginger, tumeric, cinnamon, cumin, and cardamon, stirring to coat the veggies. Add water if it gets too gummy.
Add the water and vegetable boullion to the slow cooker, mix to break up/in the boullion. Add the coated veggies to slow cooker. Add the lentils, garbanzos, and tomatoes. Cook on low overnight (for 6-8 hours).
Place the slow cooker to warm in the morning, spoon soup into a to-go thermos, and enjoy a piping hot container of soup at lunchtime on the go!

I meant to make couscous to serve with this soup, but didn't have the time to get it made Monday morning before I dashed out of the apartment at 7 am. So it was couscous-less the first day. It should be served with couscous or brown rice, or any other whole grain. Jacqui and Adrianna loved this soup too. Yay!

Fassolatha (Greek Bean Soup)

2010-03-09T16:29:00.004-05:00

On Sunday I made Fassolatha soup, after seeing the posting on Disposable Aardvarks about the Greek lunch she made for her oldest. (Can I say that I am totally jealous of her culinary and bento-making skills?)

I used the same recipe from About.com as a base. I changed a few things though...

To make this a soup that my kids and I could enjoy, I omitted the hot peppers, added some more carrots and celery, and used the 3 T of tomato paste. I used up the rest of my organic olive oil in the soup (1 cup!). The soup took an hour and a half to cook, during which time Jacqui and I watched and stirred it, and I tried to teach her how to say Fa-sou-la-tha.

On Sunday, we enjoyed the soup with breaed (not crusty, just Vermont Breads from the grocery store) and extra salt and pepper. Dave and I had it for a late lunch (at 5 pm) and Jacqui snacked on it with us and ate it for dinner. Adrianna even got in on the fun at dinner time and was eating up the beans like crazy. She wasn't a big fan of the potatoes, which I think I cut too big anyway. She did eat a few pieces of the carrot.

Yesterday, Jacqui had the soup for lunch with brown rice mixed in -- her idea -- I served it on the side and she added it right in. I tried the soup with the brown rice and liked it too! Adrianna didn't seem to like the rice in the soup. She still ate the beans, but mostly just played with the rice portion of it. I could get her to eat the rice with the beans if the spoon held 2-3 beans and 2-3 grains of rice. Otherwise, it was straight in and out of the mouth, just like the potato pieces!

Dinner last night for Jacqui was brown rice, green beans, tofu pup, strawberries. Jacqui was disappointed that we didn't have soup too. I can't remember the last time she's asked for the same meal three times in a row!

Next time I make this soup (and there will be a next time), in addition to adding extra salt and pepper (and maybe trying a hot pepper), I will also add in rice. The soup was delish with the rice soaking up the broth, and it became a full meal without having to scrounge around for some bread. Yum!

First Week of February Granola

2010-02-05T16:06:00.003-05:00

I tried to make granola a few nights ago. By memory. But I forgot an important ingredient. Well, I remembered it when I woke up the next morning. And I didn't measure out the other ingredients as I should have. And I think I added an extra cup of oats (Jacqui was helping me).

Ingredients
4-5 cups whole oats
1 cup whole flax seeds
1/2 cup wheat bran
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 tsp sea salt
ground cinnamon
ground nutmeg
ground allspice
lemon zest
1/4 cup sunflower oil
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 cup chopped pecans

(blackberry photo. not in focus. please forgive.)

What's missing? The vanilla!!

Still tastes good. :) I think I underdosed on the oil though -- at least in connection with the (extra cup of) oats because the granola, while yummily coated, did not stick together.

Jacqui's Birthday!!

2010-02-02T14:23:00.003-05:00

For Jacqui's birthday last week, I made vanilla cupcakes in pink and red silicone heart molds and topped them with chocolate peanut butter frosting. Both recipes came from The Joy of Vegan Baking, an excellent cookbook that I regularly read, if not use. The cake was soft and springy, and not too sweet. The frosting was a little decadent, and a little like Reese's pieces in spreadable, vegan form.

Surprisingly, the recipes turned out well (other than my overfilled and overflowing cupcake molds) considering my lack of measuring spoons and cups. The recipe, which claimed to make 10-12 cupcakes, made 16 (and could have made more if I hadn't overfilled those 16).

Jacqui and Fiona decorated the cupcakes with vegan sprinkles that I bought some time ago from veganessentials.com. I wish I had gotten some photos of them decorating, but I was busy frosting to keep up with their sprinkling, and didn't get any action shots.

Granola a la Rita

2010-02-02T14:12:00.003-05:00

I can't remember which day I made the granola anymore. I do remember that it was a big hit. It was early in the week...

I worked off of Rita's recipe that she shared with me when we visited her and Carlos a few weeks ago in Philly. I made a few adjustments to reflect the ingredients/lack thereof at the house.

Ingredients
~4 cups whole oats
~1 1/2 cups mixed nuts, chopped
~1 cup brown whole flax seeds
~1/2 tsp sea salt (might have been 1 tsp)
~1 tsp ground cinnamon
~1/4 cup organic canola oil
~1/2 cup molasses
~1/2 cup light brown sugar
~1 tsp vanilla
~3 cups dried cranberries and pineapple
NB: all the measurements are approximations because the house was lacking in measuring spoons and cups. I used mugs for the cups and spoons for the teaspoons.

What to do
Preheat the oven to 300 F.

In a big bowl, mix the oats and flax seeds. Chop the nuts and add them too.

On the stove, heat up a large pan, then add the oil, molasses, brown sugar, and vanilla. (The brown sugar was hard as a rock, so I had to cook it with the liquid stuff.) Cook for a few minutes on medium-high heat, until the kitchen fills with the aroma of molasses and everyone surrounds you asking what you are making.

Add the liquid ingredients to the oats and flax, and mix well. Spread into the brownie pan I found, and stick in the oven for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, remove and stir the granola around. Put it back in the oven for another 20 minutes.

Chop the pineapple and mix the cranberries and pineapple together.

When the second twenty minutes are over, remove the pan from the oven and turn it off. Let it cool for maybe five minutes, then stir in the dried fruit. As the granola cools, make sure to break up any large pieces. And hope that there's still some left in an hour!

Mild Lentil Tomato Stew

2010-02-02T13:53:00.003-05:00

It was Saturday, still in Vermont on vacation. Andy/Toly was planning a big, fancy non-vegan dinner for the group. So I needed a big, fancy vegan dinner for me and Jacqui. And lunch. It was morning, and I had to decide what to make for the rest of the day (morning meal was a delicious tofu scramble of tofu, tumeric, sweet potato, broccoli, onion, garlic, shallots, and olive oil).

Enter the red lentils, which Dave and Andy/Toly scored on Friday after searching several stores (who knew red lentils would be that hard to find in Vermont?). Enter the diced tomatoes I had bought earlier in the week (intended for a chili that was never made).

My stew might not have been big or fancy, but it was yummy, and brightly colored. Jacqui and I had it for lunch and again for dinner on Saturday. As with all the meals prepared in Stowe, I was limited in the spices that were available (what was at the house and what I had bought), so feel free to change them up if you make this stew yourself.

Ingredients
olive oil
2 cups (1 lb) red lentils (red lentils are really orange)
1 red onion, diced (red onions are really purple)
3 cloves garlic, diced (white garlic is really white)
4 large organic carrots, peeled and diced (carrots were orange this time around)
1 28-oz can organic diced fire roasted tomatoes (plus juices)
1 14-oz can organic garbanzos
water
ground cinnamon
ground tumeric
4 bay leaves
whole coriander
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

What to do
After dicing the onion, garlic, and carrots, heat up a stew pot up on med-high heat (or high if you are using an electric stove, as I was, that only heats on high) and add the olive oil when warm. When the olive oil is warm, add the onion, garlic, and carrots, and saute until the onions are translucent.

Add the lentils, garbanzos, and enough water to cover. The amount of water you add with make this stew more or less soupy, so go with what you like. (If I had vegetable bouillon, and not the MSG-laden crap that was in the house's pantry, I would have used it here.)

Add the tomatoes, and season with ground cinnamon (in the pantry) and ground tumeric (I bought it to make tofu scramble). Use as much or as little as you'd like. Feel free to replace the ground cinnamon with one or two cinnamon sticks, if you have those around. Add the bay leaves (brought from home) and some whole coriander (because that's what is in the spice pantry). Again, if you have ground coriander, that would work too. Season with salt and pepper.

Bring to a low boil and cook for at least twenty minutes -- the lentils should be soft. You can cook it longer, it will become more stew-like. Check the water content as you cook and make sure it doesn't get too solid. Also, check to make sure that nothing burns (the pot I was using had a very thin bottom, and the heat had to be on high to cook, so I had to be extra vigilant in my stirring).

You can eat this alone, or with some couscous or pasta or rice, or anything else for that matter. It's a very mild, delicately spiced stew that is pretty filling. Adrianna even ate some. Yum yum.

Sunday night fettucine

2010-01-26T18:21:00.004-05:00

Nothing special, but thought I'd log it in anyway. Sunday night when we arrived in Stowe, VT, well, before we arrived in Stowe, we got off the highway at Waterbury. And stopped at the Shaw's. And picked up ingredients for dinner.

The store sold two varieties of meatless meatballs. I picked up the "zesty" flavor, and Jacqui picked up some fettuccine. We found a jar of organic tomato sauce with mushrooms. (We bought some other stuff too, for other meals, but not important for this meal.)

On we drove to Stowe, to try to find the place we're staying at this week. Finally, we found it, and I put a pot of water on to boil for the fettuccine. In another pot, I put the sauce and the meatless balls. Jacqui snacked on some tofupups while I was cooking away.

Dinner was one package of fettuccine, one jar of mushroom tomato sauce, one bag of zesty meatless balls. Tasty, and easy, perfect for the end of a long day of driving form Brooklyn to Vermont.

Btw, Dave found a great diner on our drive up here. We stopped at Georgie's Diner in West Haven, Connecticut, which served a great variety of vegan! and non-vegan (normal diner food) food. Jacqui and I had the California Malibu burger and the Southwestern Frittata.

More besan crackers

2010-01-26T15:00:00.002-05:00

We found a natural food store (Sunflower) up here in Vermont, so I was able to buy some nutritional yeast and make crackers!

Last night's crackers:
--all measurements are approximate because measuring things are missing here --
2 cups besan
3/4 cup nutritional yeast (from Sunflower)
2 tsp sea salt (also from Sunflower)
1 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 cup crisco (I know, I know, but I didn't have anything else!)
2/3 cup vanilla soy milk

I ended up baking these for 20 minutes together (two sheets) and then another 14 minutes each sheet. The dough was a little wet, so I couldn't spread them out as thin as I would have liked. And I'm not sure that the oven really was 350F even though it said it was.

Tasty crackers resulted, so not much to complain about!

Beans and Cauliflower Stew

2010-01-26T13:50:00.006-05:00

Two types of cauliflower, two types of beans. And a whole lot of goodness.

The seasoning is weird (although I like poultry seasoning, I don't normally cook with it, and I usually use other herbs) because the pantry here at the house we're staying at (on VACATION!!!) is heavy on the granulated garlic and baking powder and light on everything else. Including measuring spoons! But I'm on vacation and it's snowing, so trying to make the most of what I've got.

Ingredients
Romanesco cauliflower, cut into small pieces (it's neon green with spires)
Orange cauliflower, cut into small pieces
1 large sweet onion, minced
3 gloves garlic, minced
olive oil
3-4 cups cooked garbanzos (cooked with shallot and garlic), and any remaining cooking water
1 cup dried Sangre de Toro beans (Rancho Gordo - Xoxoc Project beans), cooked with garlic, with cooking water
1 potato, thinly chopped
lacinato kale
poultry seasoning
basil
salt
black pepper
2 heaping T nutritional yeast
water
1/2 cup organic rice
handful of angel hair pasta, broken into two inch pieces

What to do
I cooked the garbanzos last night with shallots and garlic, and saved the remaining (not much) cooking water for the soup today. (As I found, this house, while large, is lacking in the kitchen department -- despite the size of the kitchen. No vegetable bouillon. Not many spices at all...)
This morning, with breakfast, I hard boiled the Sangre de Toro beans with 3 cloves of minced garlic for twenty minutes, then let them sit for 1 1/2 - 2 hours before cooking them.
While the beans were cooking, I minced the garlic and onion for the soup and sauteed them in some olive oil.
I washed and cut up the two heads of cauliflower. (I didn't use all of the cauliflower in the soup though).
Last night, I had washed and chopped all the kale when I was making the Christmas Lima Lasagna, so that was ready already, but if you haven't prepared it, wash and chop the kale.
Wash, peel, and chop the potato.
Once the Sangre de Toro beans are finished cooking, add the garbanzos and cooking water, the sauteed onions and garlic, several handfuls of cauliflower, handfuls of kale, the potato, some poultry seasoning (because it's the spice here!!!), dried basil (the spice I bought yesterday for the lasagna), salt, and black pepper, and water. As much water as you need to cover everything. Also, add the rice and broken angel hair pieces. Cover the pot and let it all cook.
After 30-40 minutes, taste and check the cauliflower to see if it's finished. Add more spices.
When it tastes good and the cauliflower is finished cooking, take off the heat and add the heaping spoonfuls of nutritional yeast. Let it cool a bit, and Lunch Is Served!!!

Christmas Lima Lasagna

2010-01-25T19:50:00.005-05:00

I've been dreaming about making this lasagna since I first spied the purple-marbled Christmas Limas on Rancho Gordo. That was several months ago, but I finally had the time to cook the beans and the lasagna today. I'm on vacation!!!!

Ingredients
9 pre-cooked lasagna noodles
2 zucchini, thinly sliced
5-6 large leaves lacinato kale
1 jar marinara sauce
3 1/2 (maybe a little more) cups cooked Christmas limas (I cooked a bag of Christmas limas with two diced garlic cloves and 1 large diced shallot)
4 T bean cooking water + 2-4 T water
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 cup Sesame Parmesan (1/2 cup sesame seeds, 3 T nutritional yeast, 1 tsp sea salt)

What to do
Preheat oven to 350 F.

Make Lima Bean Sauce: Cook the Christmas Limas. They become a beautiful purple color (Jacqui's favorite!) Then, place Christmas Limas, bean cooking water + water (as needed), sea salt, and basil in a blender and blend until smooth.

Make Sesame Parmesan: Grind ingredients together in a coffee grinder. Be careful not to overgrind (like I did!) or you'll get a bit of tahini with your sesame parm. But it all tastes good, so don't worry if it happens.

Assemble lasagna: Cover the bottom of your 9 x 13-inch pan with a thin layer of marinara sauce. Place a single layer of lasagna noodles in the bottom of the pan (I used three per layer). Leave a little space between noodles because they will expand when you bake the lasagna. Spread 1/3 of the Lima Bean Sauce over the noodles. Arrange zucchini slices evenly over sauce. Cover with 1/3 of the remaining marinara sauce. Place a layer of noodles over sauce. Cover with a layer of Lima Bean Sauce, then spread the kale in an even layer. Cover with marinara sauce. Repeat with Lima Bean Sauce, zucchini, and marinara. Press noodles down gently to make sure they are covered with liquid. Sprinkle the Sesame Parmesan evenly over the top.

Bake 50 to 55 minutes, or until noodles are tender. Let the lasagna rest for at least 10 minutes before slicing to set. Enjoy!!

Crackers in January

2010-01-21T01:02:00.003-05:00

Not that I had time tonight, but I really needed to cook or bake or something to improve my mood. I got home late, to a waking baby, put her back to sleep, did a little work (forwent working out), put the other child back to sleep, started doing more work, and realized that I really needed something else.

So I made crackers!

Here's what I used tonight:
1 cup besan
1 cup organic all-purpose flour
3/4 cup nutritional yeast
2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup Earth Balance (stick)
1/2 cup + 1T original organic soy milk

Here's what I did:
Combine the besan, AP flour, nutritional yeast, salt, and pepper.
Cut in the Earth Balance with pastry cutter.
Add the soy milk (1/2 cup first) and mix with hands (take off wedding ring first!). Add the 1T if needed (I needed it). The dough should make a nice ball, and not be too sticky. Tacky is ok, but not sticky.
Let the dough sit for a few minutes, while preparing the oven (365F), the pan (tonight I used a round pizza pan because it's all I could find) with parchment paper, and finding the cutter (really, it's for getting dough off surfaces, but it works really well as my cutter for crackers).
Press the dough out onto the parchment paper on the pan; try to spread it evenly. It will fill the pan.
Cut it into half, then quarters, then smaller pieces. I made rectangles tonight. And, because I couldn't find my larger cookie sheet, I didn't separate the rectangles.
Put in the oven and bake for 18 minutes.

We'll see how these turn out, unseparated. They are starting the smell pretty cheezy....mmmm...and yes, it is after 1am and I'm still working. But I got to make my crackers, so I feel much better. Or at least, that's what I'm telling myself. Back to work...

Creole-style Yellow-Eyed Peas

2010-01-01T17:40:00.003-05:00

For good luck in the New Year!

I had a cup of the yellow-eyed peas that I bought from Rancho Gordo remaining, and New Year's Day upon us, so I decided to use those beans for our good luck lunch. I'm also in love with my pressure cooker, so it makes another appearance here!

Ingredients
First Step
little bit of olive oil
1 small red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 red pepper & 1/2 green pepper, chopped (I took a bag of pepper strips from my mom's fridge when we left there earlier this week)
1 rib celery and leaves, chopped
1 cup dried yellow-eyed peas, picked, rinsed, and soaked overnight (I'm sure that black-eyed peas would work too)
2 1/2 cups water

Second Step
14-15 oz diced tomatoes (and juice)
1 tsp dried oregano
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 scant tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

Third Step
1/2 tsp hickory liquid smoke

What to do
Step One
Heat pressure cooker, add bit of olive oil, and saute onion. Add the peppers, celery + leaves, and garlic, and saute some more. Add a bit of water if necessary to keep everything from burning. Add the yellow-eyed peas and water. Cover, and bring to pressure. Cook at pressure for 10 minutes. Let the pressure release.

Step Two
Once the pressure is released, open the pressure cooker and add the ingredients for step two - the spices and tomatoes. Cook for ~20 minutes, until sauce-like.

Step Three
Add the liquid smoke, and cook for a few more minutes.

Serve with brown rice and greens (if you had time to make them, which I didn't). So we enjoyed the beans with brown rice. And Dave added a bit of hot sauce (all the "creole" recipes I saw used hot sauce in the actual cooking, but I did not, so that there was a chance that Jacqui might eat it!

Outcome/Thoughts
Too much hickory smoke for my taste...I will be reducing that if/when I make this dish again.

Dave liked it, as did I. Jacqui tolerated it, which means that she wouldn't eat it by herself, but readily ate it when I helped her. And she drank a lot of milk with it! :)

Here's to the New Year!

End of December Cooking and Baking

2010-01-01T17:39:00.003-05:00

Our camera is lost or was stolen. And I had a lot of work to get done before Christmas. Those are my excuses for having nothing posted since December 15.

Here's what I was up to...

Curried Lentils and Cauliflower with Brown Rice
--I was afraid of overspicing these (for Jacqui) and didn't use enough curry powder. Next time -- more!

Tunisian Tomato and Lentil Soup
--Delicious! Not too spicy, and with some brown rice or other whole grain, very filling.

Grammie's Brownies
--this recipe is just too big to make for me! I ate too many and gave the rest away to friends. I also used apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar, which gave the brownies a bit of a tangy kick.

Steamed beets, turnips, Brussels sprouts, and carrots with brown rice and walnuts
--this dinner needed a sauce. The beets were delish (Jacqui ate them all!), but steamed veggies are, as Dave says, blah without something else.

Pea and Barley Soup
--used my mom's pea soup recipe, but added barley and changed the spices around a bit. A big hit with Jacqui and Dave. Jacqui will be eating this for meals this week (back to work!).

Cheezy Pasta and Mushrooms
--made a few changes to my cheezy sauce; Dave liked it a lot more. I used some more brown rice miso (I think that's what changed the flavor for him), and replaced the cornstarch with kuzu powder (2 tsp), used 3/4 tsp salt and 3/4 tsp garlic, and used roasted sunflower seeds. The sauce makes A LOT -- 6 cups. I used 3 1/2 cups of it with the pasta (1 and 1/2 packages of spirals) and topped it all with mushrooms (black Chinese ones and miataki) sauteed with Earth Balance, olive oil, and two minced cloves of garlic. Yummmm....

Orange Stew

2009-12-15T11:54:00.005-05:00

Today's stew is orange. Very orange. But not orange from oranges. Orange from sweet potatoes and squash. Beautifully orange!

Ingredients
1 cup dried garbanzos, soaked overnight (makes ~ 3 1/2 cups cooked beans)
2 sweet potatoes, scrubbed
1 long squash
1-2 T olive oil
1/2 very large onion
2 large cloves garlic
2 large parsnips
2 blue potatoes
2 T liquid vegetable bouillon
water
2 handfuls wild rice mix
3/4 cup red quinoa

What to do
Cook the beans, drain.
Chop the onion; dice the garlic.
Heat soup pot, when warm, add the olive oil. When the oil is warm, add the chopped onion and saute for 5 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for another 3 minutes.
Cut the sweet potatoes into 1/2 inch rounds, then into six pieces per round slice. Add to the pot with enough water to cover.
Add the vegetable bouillon. Stir to combine. Cover the pot.
Peel the squash, halve it, scoop out the insides, and cut out the stem. Then, slice it into 1/2 inch half rounds and cut those into 3-4 pieces each. Add to the pot. Add more water if needed. Stir. Cover the pot.
Peel the parsnips and chop. Add to the pot. Add more water if needed, to cover vegetables. Stir. Cover the pot.
Peel the potatoes and cut into 1/2 inch rounds, then into six pieces per round slice. Add to the pot. Add more water if needed, to cover vegetables. Stir. Cover the pot.
Take two large handfuls of the wild rice mix and add to the pot. Stir. Add more water if needed. Cover the pot.
Let it all cook for 35-45 minutes, stirring to keep the stew from sticking.
Add the quinoa (rinse if you remember to - I didn't last night/this morning when I added the quinoa at 1-something). Stir well. Cover the pot and let it cook for another 20-30 minutes.
When the cooking is finished, cover the pot until you are ready to serve it, reheating on the stove if needed.

Vegan Pumpkin Brownies

2009-12-07T00:11:00.010-05:00

Packed up to shared with my non-vegan friends at work

After my friend Kristi asked about vegan brownies without oil, I started searching for another recipe to send to her. (My first recipe was from my Grammie Lundquist.)

I found lots of recipes out there for vegan brownies. Woo hoo! I also found recipes for pumpkin brownies...and we all know how much I love pumpkin..I tried some in my 10-grain cereal the other morning. A was eating her pumpkin for breakfast and I thought I'd join in! A is also a lover of pumpkin. Most pumpkin brownie recipes amazingly don't have chocolate in them...not sure how they are brownies without the chocolate...

I liked the idea of pumpkin brownies, but I didn't use one recipe. I liked the layers idea from one recipe, and decided to use my own spice combo that I like with pumpkin. And, I love my spelt flour, so I was set on using it in whatever brownies I ended up making.

Here's my version of Vegan Pumpkin Brownies.

Ingredients
safflower oil
Pumpkin Layer
1 can organic pure pumpkin
1/4 cup organic applesauce
1 T ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground tumeric
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground Jamaican allspice
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
Brownie Layer
Wet
3/4 cup plain soy yogurt
2/4 cup organic applesauce
1 T vanilla
1 cup turbinado sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar
Dry
1 1/2 cups freshly ground spelt flour
1/2 cup organic cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
Topping
1/2 - 3/4 cup chopped pecans

What I did
I preheated the oven to 375 (350 interior temp). I oiled my 9 x 13 pan with a little bit of safflower oil.

I mixed the first Pumpkin Layer ingredients together in a small bowl with a spatula.

Then, I mixed the Wet Brownie Layer ingredients together in a medium bowl.

I mixed the Dry Brownie Layer ingredients together in a large bowl. Then I added the Wet to the Dry and mixed together with a wooden spoon.

I poured the Brownie Layer into my 9 x 13 pan, and spread it out evenly. Then I added the Pumpkin Layer on top and spread it out with the spatula, mixing the layers together a bit. I sprinkled the chopped pecans on the top of the brownies, and popped the pan in the oven for 60 minutes.

They are cooking now (yes, it's almost 12:30 -- I'm up working and baking) and the apartment is starting to smell lovely. Chocolate and pumpkin...yum. I will update tomorrow/later today with the outcome of these yummy-smelling treats.

Fresh out of the oven at 1 am...

Update
I ate two for breakfast. I know, not the best breakfast, but I needed to try them out.

The spices are a little overpowering in the pumpkin layer, so I will halve them next time. Also, parts of the pumpkin layer are still not "set" even after baking for an hour. And parts of the brownie layer are downright chewy after the hour baking time. So I need to work on getting the pumpkin to cook more and the brownie to cook less.

I brought some to work with me today, so we'll see how non-vegans like these creations...

My first non-vegan friend to try them liked them and ate two. He suggested giving the recipe to our cafeteria so that they can make something other than meat and meat and dairy-filled food for a change.

I had another (two) tonight, when I should have been ordering dinner. They are much better than this morning! The spices have mellowed and I couldn't stop after just one. Thank goodness I only brought a limited number to work!

Peanut, Sweet Potato, Barley, and Bean Stew

2009-12-06T22:17:00.007-05:00

I used up the last of my Rancho Gordo Lila beans in this stew. So good! :)

The impetus for this stew was my sweet potatoes. After being away for five days, one of my (newly bought) sweet potatoes decided to rot. :( Dave just put my bag of sweet potatoes in another plastic bag, and I wasn't able to do anything about it until late Friday night when I got home from work. So, late Friday night, I cleaned and cut off bad spots from my remaining sweet potatoes, and ended up peeling two. (Do I know how to start a weekend or what?) I wanted to use the peeled potatoes up before anything else weird happened with these sweet potatoes, so I used them to make this stew.

The stew uses barley, because J asked for barley while we were looking at the different grains on the table. She chose barley over this cool-looking burnt-umber colored rice I got at Fairways, standard white and brown rices, and kasha. I'm sure any other whole grain would work in this stew too. And next time I'll probably make it with a different grain, because Dave thinks that J has a hard time eating barley (she chews is slowly).

My inspiration for including the peanut butter was J and our breakfast this morning. I made us some Bob's Red Mill 10-grain cereal and she wanted me to add peanut butter to our hot cereal, in addition to our standard soy milk, pumpkin seeds, pecans, and dried cranberries. It creamed up really well and the little chunks of peanut tasted great in the cereal. So, I thought, why not try it in the soup. Not to mention that every recipe I've ever seen for African stew includes peanut butter and sweet potatoes or yams!

The main part of the stew is the beans. The delicious, and now finished, Lila beans.

Ingredients
1 cup dried Lila beans, soaked overnight or two nights
2-3 in piece of Kombu
water
2 T freshly ground organic peanut butter
handful of whole organic peanuts
2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into small cubes
1 cup pearl barley
1 square no-chicken vegetable bouillon (optional)
1 bunch Vitamin greens

What to do
Soak the beans. (Start on Friday night, get too busy on Saturday to make anything, and finally get to cook them on Sunday.) Cook the beans in a large pot with the Kombu. If the beans need more water as they cook, add boiling water to the pot to keep the beans from getting hard.

After the beans are finished cooking, add the sweet potato cubes, barley, and peanut butter. Add enough more water - everything should be covered. Don't dump the bean cooking water -- it's the broth for this stew. The barley will soak up a lot of water as it cooks, so make sure to add enough. Also, you can add the bouillon if you are using it now. You can add the peanuts now or right before serving, up to you. ( I added them earlier so that they could cook with everything else. I was also not sure if I would get to add them otherwise, as my little A was requiring lots of attention and nursing.) As the stew cooks, stir it regularly to break up the peanut butter and the bouillon and distribute evenly throughout the stew.

While the stew is cooking, chop the greens (including stems). Put them in a pan with some water, cover, and sweat for 5-7 minutes, adding water as needed to keep the greens from scorching.

To serve, put the stew into a bowl and top with the greens. See J's bowl below. That's her cheesing it up for my cell phone camera (we can't find our camera since our trip to Maryland! Have you seen it?).

Thoughts
If reheating, you'll probably want to add more water, as the barley continues to soak up the broth. We have one serving left of this, which J will get for a meal this week.

I have the coolest kids. J asked for the greens for her snack this afternoon (D asked, J, do you want a cookie. J replies, no, I want greens!). And A had some of the greens for dinner tonight. Heehee.

Creamy Potatoed Veggies

2009-12-06T21:30:00.005-05:00

This was Dave's and my dinner tonight, and will be J's lunch tomorrow. One bowl full filled me all the way up. The seasoning had just enough garlic in it -- it smelled really great while I was eating it. Make sure it's hot when you eat. I based tonight's dinner on a recipe I found in Kathy Cooks. (Ugh, I paid a lot more than what's being offered on Amazon tonight for this book -- I wonder what happened that all of a sudden there are numerous copies for really cheap??)

Ingredients
6 medium organic Yukon gold potatoes
1 organic carnival squash
1 1/2 cups organic carrots
1 cup frozen organic peas
4 T Earth Balance
1/2 T no-salt organic seasoning
4 heaping tsp nutritional yeast
2 1/4 cups organic soy milk
coarse sea salt & black pepper

What to do
Scrub the vegetables well. With the exception of the carrots, the skins are all used in this dish, so you want to make sure your veggies are clean!
Cut out any eyes or bad spots and prick the potatoes with a fork. Bake or microwave the potatoes until soft.
Cut the squash in half, scoop out the insides (save the seeds!), and bake or microwave. Make sure you have water in the pan, whichever you do, to keep the squash moist. After it's cooked, cut the squash, with the skin, into small cubes.
Peel and cut the carrots into 1/2 to 1 inch chunks. Steam.
Cut 2 of the cooked potatoes into small cubes.
Cut 4 of the cooked (still warm!) potatoes in quarters and mash with the Earth Balance. Put this mixture, the soy milk, seasoning, and nutritional yeast into the blender and blend until smooth.
Add the carrots, squash, and remaining potatoes to a large pot and add the creamy potato sauce. Add a little more soy milk if it looks too thick. Add the frozen peas.
Heat through.
Serve on top of pasta with sea salt and pepper to taste.
Enjoy!

Brownies :)

2009-12-01T10:56:00.003-05:00

Just for my friend Kristi, who wondered why I didn't have any dessert-type recipes up here. Well, the short (and not-so-sweet) of it is that Dave doesn't eat sweets, and I cannot eat an entire recipe of sweets myself! That and there's SO MUCH sugar in these brownies! :)

Here's one of my favorite brownie recipes, for Kristi. It's passed down from my Grammie Lundquist -- vegan without any substitutions!

Notes
OIL -- I think that you can use any type of oil, although I've only made these with vegetable oil, canola oil, and sunflower oil. If you want to use olive oil, refined olive oil is processed to remove the strong taste associated with olive oil (extra virgin, virgin). Or you could just add a little more cocoa. :)

Cocoa -- I use Equal Exchange baking cocoa. Yum.

Sugar -- I like using turbinado or raw cane sugar in this recipe.

I might even make these up this week. It's December, so I can bring a bunch of them to work, thereby avoiding the danger of eating them all myself!!!

Ingredients
3 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup cocoa
2 tsp salt
3/4 cup oil
2 T vinegar
4 tsp vanilla
1 cup water
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

What to do
Sift dry ingredients together. Add wet ingredients to dry. Stir just enough to completely mix the wet and dry ingredients. Stir in the chopped nuts, if using. Spread into a lightly oiled 9 x 13 pan. Bake 40-30 minutes at 325 degrees. Let the brownies cool for five minutes or so in the pan before cutting them. Cut them as big or as little as you'd like.

Three Roots & Beans Soup

2009-11-24T11:17:00.005-05:00

My attempt at a cute name for la soupe du jour. :P The soup has three beans (yellow wax beans, green beans, and pink Lila beans) and three root vegetables (golden beet, Yukon gold potato, and red potatoes), along with some other yummy ingredients.

This morning was an early morning. Not because I had to get to work early (like Friday and Monday), but because the girls have gotten used to waking up early with me. We just need to adjust their other sleeping times to make up for the hour they are losing in the morning.

I asked J, as we were making breakfast sandwiches with the pumpkin biscuits, slices of Tofutti cheese (orange for J, white for me), and Yves faux Canadian bacon, what she wanted to do. She wanted to make soup! So, we made soup, in the slow cooker.

I dreamed of minestrone for some reason last night. This soup is by no means a minestrone (not sure what makes a soup a minestrone...must figure that out...), but it's a very full (and hopefully filling) soup.

Ingredients
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 small red onion, chopped (part of our Fairway haul)
1 large clove garlic, minced (EO)
1 golden beet, chopped (EO)
6 small red potatoes, chopped
1 medium Yukon gold potato, chopped (Fairway)
1 - 1/2 lbs green and yellow wax beans, ends snapped off and broken into 1 - 2 inch pieces
1 cup tiny orange/yellow tomatoes (J picked them Saturday at the market)
beet greens, washed and cut into small pieces (EO)
5 cups water
1 square not-chicken vegetable bouillon
1/2 cup pastini (stars!)
1 cup cooked Lila Rancho Gordo beans (grown by Mexican farmers participating in the Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc Project)
Splash of apple cider vinegar

What to do
It's a slow cooker soup, so bring out the slow cooker and plug it in. Put it to hot. W hen it's a little warm, add the olive oil.
Chop the onion and garlic, and add to the warm pot and olive oil. Stir.
Chop the root vegetables and add to the pot. Stir.
Add the water and the bouillon square. Stir.
Wash, trim, and break the yellow and green beans into 1 - 2 inch pieces, and add to the pot. Stir.
Wash and add the tomatoes to the pot. Stir.
Add the Lila beans. Stir.
Take the beet greens off the stems (J helped here), wash them, and cut them up. I used kitchen sheers because I was holding A by this point and couldn't use a knife. Add the greens to the pot. Stir.
After 10-15 minutes (give the greens time to wilt), add the pastini. (Add more water if you think you need it at this point too.) Stir.
Add the splash of apple cider vinegar. Stir.
Wait until lunchtime, and serve!

Thoughts
Any bean would probably work here. I had made these beans up over the weekend and have been eating them as I need beans. They are quite good, with a depth of flavor that I'm not used to in my normal beans. That's why I paid the big bucks for them though -- the taste of RG beans is supposed to be outstanding!

The apple cider vinegar is to combat the bitterness of the greens. I know that J likes the greens (we've eaten them before), but I cook them with a splash of vinegar to take the bitter edge off. So, I added that splash to the soup. Should work.

I ate this soup for dinner. By the time I got home tonight, as you can see from the pictures, the soup was more of a stew. I think that D must have left it on high for most of the day and not turned it to low or warm after lunch. Oh well. Still delish! :)

A, J, and Spike

2009-11-23T22:54:00.004-05:00

Spike, doing what he does best -- lounging in the various seats around the apartment. This is J's seat. He's using the towel as a pillow. Gotta love it!

J, eating her yellow bean barley soup and sitting in her "special" chair. This is the chair we bought initially for A to have a seat at the table, but J took it over immediately. Just as well, because it doesn't have a tray and has to be pushed right up to the table. A inherited J's tray seat...
And she loves it! Lunchtime on the weekends with Mommy and J is the best!

Drop Pumpkin Biscuits

2009-11-23T21:48:00.008-05:00

Tonight I made pumpkin biscuits to go with my eggplant would-be chili leftovers. The would-be chili is still blah, even after the flavors/spices have had a day to blend (plus the full day in the slow cooker). But the pumpkin biscuits are light and airy and full of pumpkiny-goodness! Together, a filling meal.

Drop Pumpkin Biscuits
Ingredients
1 cup freshly milled spelt flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup + 1 spoonful canned organic pumpkin
1/2 cup almond milk + 1 T lemon juice

What to do
Preheat oven to 400 (415 for my sad oven).
Mix the dry ingredients together.
Add the pumpkin and the milk with lemon juice. Mix together with a spoon or your fingers if you need to. (I needed to.)
Drop biscuits onto baking sheet lined with parchment paper. I made 13 with this recipe.
Bake for 15-20 minutes.

This is a wet biscuit dough. For a drier biscuit dough, use 1/2 the pumpkin. I think if you make the drier biscuit dough, you could roll these out and use a biscuit cutter with them. But they are perfect like this for drop, and they have more pumpkin in them...and who doesn't love pumpkin!

These biscuits are based on the topping for FatFreeVegan's Celebration Pot Pie. I won't be making that any time soon (I need a large kitchen, large fridge, people to eat the large quantities of food it makes), but I did like the idea for the pumpkin biscuit topping.

Eggplant Would-be Chili

2009-11-23T18:19:00.010-05:00

This wasn't quite a fail. But it was not a success. And I won't be making it again.

I had two gorgeous eggplants to use. Gorgeous. Not the full purple ones, but the streaks of purple on white. Gorgeous. I wanted a soup with eggplant and garbanzos (I had cooked up garbanzos earlier in the week and wanted to finish them off).

I also wanted a chili. To be chili, a dish needs cumin, chili peppers/powder, and oregano. I like my chili with beans (come on, vegan here!). And I wanted my chili to have eggplant.

I was out of onions, so this chili didn't get any onions. (I didn't even have onion powder or granules, only garlic.) I had a little bit of red lentils that I thought would add good texture and iron, and millet remaining from a lunch meal for me earlier in the week. I don't know why this turned out so blah.

I chopped up my eggplants, chopped up two small red turnips, added the golden zuchinni I had cut up for J (she asked for "chinni" and then ate one bite of one piece), about a cup of cooked millet, my garbanzos (about a cup), cumin, oregano, Mexican chili powder, 1/3 cup dry red lentils, and 1 1/4 cups water. Hello slowcooker Friday night, cook please so that I have chili for Saturday.

Ok, maybe I know what happened. I was afraid of the spices (I wanted J to be able to eat, and the Mexican chili powder has been too much for her in the past), so I didn't use enough initially. When I tasted the would-be chili in the morning, I added more. But it just wasn't enough. It looked like chili, but the taste just wasn't there. I added fresh oregano and roasted squash seeds when J and I ate it for lunch, which really improved the dish, but still, not something I'm making again. And J had a really hard time eating it...because she didn't like it at all! Eck!

The leftovers...I'm thinking maybe putting them in bread or something. We'll see as the week progresses.

Winter Squash and Tofu Soup

2009-11-23T17:50:00.006-05:00

It looked like cornmeal. Yummy cornmeal. And made me really want cornbread or popped corn or anything corn. But no corn involved. I did snack on the popped pumpkin squash seeds I made while roasting the squash...

I based the soup on a recipe in Robin Robertson's One-Dish Vegetarian Meals cookbook. I roasted my long pumpkin squash on Saturday, and needed to use up some of the goodness. A can't eat it all herself!

I also had a block of soft tofu in the fridge, taking up precious space needed for our $200 haul from Fairway... I'm a little afraid of tofu, so I tend to use it blended in things, made into brownies, etc. One day I will be brave and try some of those great sounding and looking tofu recipes out there, but until that day, beans are my staple and tofu will be incorporated into my dishes.

Here's Sunday's dinner

Winter Squash and Tofu Soup
Ingredients
1 1/2 T extra virgin olive oil
1 red onion, chopped
1 huge clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped (frozen) celery
1 large carrot, chopped
1 Yukon gold potato, chopped
1 1/4-1 1/2 cup roasted pumpkin squash
5 cups water
1 block soft tofu, crumbled
2 cups frozen brown rice
1/4-1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2-1 tsp coarse sea salt
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
1/2-1 tsp no-salt seasoning
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/4 cup (or more) nutritional yeast

What to do
Heat big LeCreuset, heat olive oil, saute onion for 5 minutes. Add garlic, saute 2-3 minutes more. (I forgot the garlic, and sauteed and added it after the soup was a soup; it still worked. :))
Add the vegetables, water, seasonings, nutritional yeast, and rice. Crumble the tofu into the pot. Cook for 30 minutes, until vegetables are soft.
When all the veggies are soft, puree the soup, with an immersion blender or by batches in a blender or food processor. (The immersion blender makes this step SUPER easy.) Taste and add more salt or nutritional yeast or no-salt seasoning, whatever you think it needs.
Enjoy!

It's a full meal in a bowl. You could serve it with fresh parsley, but I couldn't find mine. (Turns out it was still in a bag in the living room, having been forgotten the previous day! I crashed when putting the kiddies to bed after our Fairways trip, and D didn't remember that the parsley was hiding out in a bag with sweet potatoes and other non-refrigeratables.)

J and I ate our soup with extra sprinkles (aka nutritional yeast) and I added some sprinklings of coarse sea salt to mine. YUM.

Pizza Dough

2009-11-17T11:43:00.003-05:00

J loves pizza. D loves pizza. I hate buying delivery pizza because we end up with huge boxes in the fridge (none of us ever finish our pizzas). Our fridge isn't very big. The pizza boxes are big. (And D refuses to eat the cheese-less pizza that J and I get, so we will never finish a full delivery pizza...)

I've been looking for an easy-to-make pizza dough recipe that **doesn't** require making the day before and sitting in the fridge, because you know that's not going to happen. Also, Lynn has been bragging about making Vegan Dad's stromboli with Whole Foods brand frozen pizza dough. (Our freezer, like our fridge, is small. And filled with frozen veggies, frozen breastmilk, and flours, so no room for pizza dough.)

Today, while checking out the Disposable Aardvark blog -- which, btw, I will totally be relying on when J starts school for great vegan kid bento lunch ideas -- I found a relatively quick and easy pizza dough recipe. I will be making it later this week!

Hearty Tomato, Fennel, and Kasha Soup

2009-11-15T17:57:00.003-05:00

Saturday was a big cooking day for me. I had lots of yummy vegetables that I didn't want to go to waste, and I needed to make some good food for J for the week.

The inspiration for this soup was the fennel I bought. It's been sitting in the fridge for a week -- I didn't know what to do with it. I looked in all my cookbooks for something that sounded good -- or that even included fennel! Not much.

I decided that the fennel looked like celery, and so maybe I could use it like celery. The most interesting recipe I saw for fennel was a Mediterranean-style soup, but it required some vegetables (and beans) that I didn't have. I did have crushed tomatoes...and who doesn't love a good tomato soup on a rainy day?

Ingredients
1 small yellow onion, chopped
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 cup baby carrots, chopped
1 fennel bulb + stems, chopped
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1 no-chicken bouillon square
4 cups hot water
2 bay leaves
1 tsp no-salt seasoning
1 28-oz crushed tomatoes
fennel fronds, chopped
1 cup cooked garbanzos
1 1/2 cups cooked small white beans
1/2 cup uncooked kasha

What To Do
Make the "fennel mirepoix" - warm the LeCreuset over medium heat, add and warm the olive oil, then add the chopped onion, carrots, and fennel. Saute for 10 minutes. Add the chopped garlic and saute for another three minutes.
Add the bouillon square and hot water, bay leaves, seasoning, and crushed tomatoes.
Add the garbanzos and white beans. Mix well. Add the kasha. Cover and cook for 30-60 minutes.
Add the fennel fronds, and keep soup warm on low until ready to serve.

How it turned out
D and J had this soup for dinner Saturday (while I was out celebrating Sera's birthday!) and both liked it. They had some breadsticks with the soup. I ate a bowl when I came home. The fennel was still a little crunchy (I had hoped for that) and the soup had a slight licorice smell and taste. D called it a "tea-smell" -- I think my nursing tea has fennel in it and he associated the smell with my tea. It was much thicker than I thought it would be - but in a good way.

All the recipes I saw with fennel only called for the bulb. I thought that was such a waste! There are stalks and fronds to work with too!!! I used everything from my fennel in this soup. I also used up my last onion and most of my garlic, so those are getting added to the shopping list too.

Yellow Eye Barley Stew

2009-11-15T14:24:00.006-05:00

I finally received my beans from Rancho Gordo! I had ordered two packages of Yellow Indian Woman Beans, but I received two packages of Yellow Eye Beans. When I contacted Rancho Gordo, they said to keep the Yellow Eyes and they would ship me the Yellow Indian Woman Beans. I took this as a sign that I should make something immediately with the Yellow Eyes.

I really wanted a thick, earthy stew, so I chose barley as the grain to match with the Yellow Eyes.

I've also been reading a bit lately about the "traditional" preparations/soup bases, especially in European cooking. A mirepoix is the basic French base for soups: onion, carrot, celery. So, that's what I started with vegetable-wise.

The beans were soft and delicious. This soup doesn't overpower them, and all the vegetables went very well with the flavor of the beans. The barley was a good complement too.

Ingredients
1 cup uncooked Rancho Gordo Yellow Eye Beans, soaked overnight
1 small yellow onion, chopped (KF*)
1/2 - 1 cup organic celery, chopped (KF)
1 cup organic baby carrots, chopped (KF)
1 1/2 T organic extra virgin olive oil (KF)
4 large organic cabbage leaves, cleaned, rolled, and chopped (EO*)
1 organic golden beet, chopped (EO)
2 organic purple turnips, chopped (EO)
6 very small organic red potatoes, chopped (KF)
1 cup uncooked pearl barley (KF)
1/2 cup sliced exotic mushrooms (FW*)
1 heaping T organic no-salt seasoning (C*)
1 organic Rapunzel no-chicken bouillon square (NYN*)
water

What To Do
Soak beans overnight. Cook in soaking water, plus more water if needed, for 45 - 60 minutes.
Start with the mirepoix: heat large LeCrueset, when warm, add olive oil; when olive oil is warm, add onion, carrot, and celery and saute for 10 minutes. It took me a little longer because I used frozen chopped celery, which brought a bit of water into the mix. Although, I should add that if the mirepoix starts to stick, you should add a little water to keep everything from charring on the pan.
Add a bit of water and the bouillon square, and stir to mix well and break up/dissolve the bouillon.
Start adding the other vegetables, ideally the ones that take the longest to cook (potatoes, beet, turnips) first. I did not put anything in the right order, and it still turned out great. :)
Add in more water (to cover vegetables) and seasoning. Add the rinsed barley, make sure the barley is covered by the water, and cover.
When the Yellow Eye Beans are almost done cooking, add them and the cooking water to the stew pot. Cover and cook. Barley needs approximately 45 minutes to cook. The stew should simmer for at least that long; longer will make it even tastier!

Serve and enjoy -- it's a perfect stew for a rainy Saturday. This stew should make 6 servings. J and I ate it for lunch, and I had four servings to put into the fridge for meals later this week. Like most of my stews, this will need some water added when reheated because the barley will soap up the broth. I guess it could be eaten as a not-stew if you didn't add the water when reheating.

*KF - Key Food; EO - Evolutionary Organics (my favorite farmer at the market); FW - Fairway; C - Costco; NYN - New York Naturals (my local natural market).

Photos added!

2009-11-11T21:30:00.005-05:00

Photos of recent posts...

Pumpkin Muffins!!!

Saturday Stew (aka Potato, Squash, and Wild Rice Stew)

Stuffed Squash with Quinoa and Greens

Sweet Black Bean Chili

Sweet Potato Biscuits...and a close-up to see how scrumptious they are!!!

And finally, a photo of J enjoying her Saturday stew with one of her favorite vegetables in spoon - Brussels sprouts! Yay!

Pumpkin Muffins!!!

2009-11-09T16:06:00.006-05:00

It being fall, and I loving pumpkin, I decided to make my own pumpkin muffins to supplement the pieces of pumpkin breads that my loving D brings home for me on days when he takes J for lunch to our friendly veg-Ital shop on Washington for a vegetable or soy pattie and maybe some vegan ice cream.

These muffins are perfect for breakfast or a snack or a second breakfast. They are light and moist (although if you add the extra T of flax below, they are less moist). It's hard to stop after just one!

I've worked on this recipe a bit and tried it a few different ways. These muffins have been devoured, so I am making them regularly now (or as often as I can get organic canned pumpkin!). I need to get some more pumpkin from the store on my way home tonight, as we finished the last of these for breakfast this morning. :)

Ingredients
2 T ground golden flax plus 6 T water
1 can organic canned pumpkin
1/4 cup organic oil (canola or sunflower -- don't use olive)
1/3 cup maple syrup (I'm now using the HUGE container that D brought back from Canada on his last trip)
1 1/2 cups spelt flour (ground by the farmer!)
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 T flax, if desired (I find adding the extra flax makes the muffins less "wet" after baking)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground tumeric
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 - 1 cup chopped nuts (I use pecans)
12 whole nuts to top muffins
cinnamon sugar, ground nutmeg, etc for topping muffins
12 biodegradable muffin liners

What To Do
Preheat the oven to 370 F (350 F for those of you without finicky ovens).
Whisk the flax and water in a small dish and set aside while you prepare everything else.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the pumpkin, oil, and maple syrup.
In a large bowl, stir together the spelt flour, baking soda and powder, salt, and spices. Add the extra ground flax if using.
Whisk the flax and water together again and add to the pumpkin mixture, whisking to combine. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir or whisk to combine. Make sure to get any pockets of flour incorporated into the batter. Add the chopped nuts if using.
Prepare your muffin pan with the muffin liners. Fill the tin. Top each with a whole pecan or other nut. Sprinkle the tops with freshly ground nutmeg or cinnamon or cinnamon sugar, or whatever you may like.
Put in the oven for 35 minutes. If your oven runs hot, check at 30 minutes. A toothpick inserted in the center of one of the middle muffins should come out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. Try to wait until they've cooled a little before you start to devour them!

Green Beans and Cinnamon Yogurt Dipping Sauce

2009-11-09T13:37:00.003-05:00

J loves picking green beans at the market. *loves* loves * loves* picking them.

Saturday we got a whole new bunch of green beans and yellow wax beans, but we still had half our haul of green beans from the previous week. So, I put J to work. I showed her how to snap off the ends and break the beans into smaller pieces. She and I got all the beans ready, washed them, them put them on the stove with water for 10-15 minutes to cook (covered).

After a trip to the playground, I chopped and sauteed 1/2 yellow onion in some olive oil, then added the beans to warm them up again. I added in some Earth Balance to make it all super yummy.

Before cooking the onion and beans, I made up a little dipping sauce for J: ground cinnamon sprinkled in a container, one small pinch of saffron threads, and some vanilla soy yogurt. I let the sauce sit for 5-10 minutes (longer probably would have been better) before serving.

I put some of the green beans and a big dollop of the dipping sauce on J's plate. She happily ate everything. And then I happily ate some too. Yummy and simple. The sauce was very cinnamony - this is a good cool weather sauce.

Saturday Stew

2009-11-09T12:23:00.009-05:00

This stew was excellent! ...and probably deserves a better name than Saturday Stew...

I wanted to use up some of my veggie stores before going to the farmers' market. J and I put this stew together in the morning between making/eating breakfast, getting A to sleep for a nap, and heading out to the market, where we of course bought lots more vegetable goodness.

Ingredients
1 big tomato (mistakenly bought or given me by one of the farmers last week), chopped
1 cup cooked black beans
1 golden squash, sliced into rounds and then halved or quartered
1 small butternut squash, peeled and chopped
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 1/2 cups Brussels sprouts, halved
6 small red potatoes, scrubbed and chopped
1 cup wild rice mix
1 no-chicken vegetable bouillon cube
water
olive oil

What I did
I started by chopping the onion, heating up my huge LeCreuset, and warming the oil. Then I sauteed the onion for a few minutes.
J picked out six of our little red potatoes, which I then scrubbed, cut the eyes out of, and cut up.
I peeled the butternut squash, scooped out the insides, and cut it up. I then cut the rest of the veggies. I had already "peeled" (not quite the right word, but I'm not totally sure what to call it) the Brussels sprouts earlier in the week, so I just had to cut them in half.
I added the veggies as I cut them to the pot, where I had already add the water and two bouillon squares. This process took an hour or so, between all the other stuff we were doing. I kept it on low-medium heat.

Maybe 15 minutes before we left for the market, I added the black beans and J helped me add one cup of a wild rice mix that I got at MOM's last time we were down in Maryland. (I kept wavering on adding the black beans, because I really wasn't sure about black beans with potatoes and squash. I decided that I needed to use them, and they were the only cooked, non-frozen beans that I had on hand, so I put them in. I don't know why I was so wary about adding them -- they were excellent in this soup, and provided a nice contract to the whites, reds, and browns of the rice, and the orange of the squash.)

We left it on low heat on my simmer burner and spent 1 1/2 hours at the market getting all sorts of fall vegetables from Evolutionary Organics and a NJ farm (hello way too many green and yellow beans!) and some Freekah and spelt flour from Cayoga Pure Organics, listening to Cajun zydeco music (two fiddlers and one accordionist), and stopping off at the Brooklyn Public Library to drop off and pick up a book.

The apartment smelled delicious when we walked in. J asked for some more zydeco music; I didn't have any on my iTunes, so we settled for some South American, and got ourselves some stew for an early lunch (it was 11:40). Not only did is smell like it should be eaten again and again, it looked gorgeous! So many colors and textures! One bowl each of thick, filling stew later, J and A were ready for their naps. Ahh...sleep...full tummies...

I gave J this stew for lunch on Sunday, adding more water to it when I heated it up on the stove (the rice had soaked up all the broth). It was just as delish and possibly more filling the second time around (I ate the bit that didn't fit into J's bowl). She's got probably three more servings for meals this week. Yum.

Soup Fail

2009-11-09T12:07:00.007-05:00

It's hard to mess up soup, but I did it.

I had grand dreams for this soup...winter squash plus adzuki beans plus apples. It should have been delish. But alas and alack for my poor soup, I decided to cook it in the slow cooker overnight (because I got home very late last night from Penn Station to see my Mom and Sister, who were there for two hours between trains).

For posterity (thanks Lynn), here's what I did - and what not to do again.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups cooked adzuki beans
1 medium long pumpkin squash, thing rings, then thirds
1 1/2 granny smith apples, sliced very thin
1 red delicious apple, sliced very thin
1 small yellow onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and minced
1-2 T olive oil
1-2 tsp frozen fresh lime juice
two shakes black pepper
two shakes ground cinnamon
pinch ground cloves
2 vegan buillion cubes (Rapunzel)
4 cups boiling water

What I did -- Where did I go wrong?
First, I cooked up 1 cup of dry adzuki beans earlier in the day. It made 3 1/2 cups cooked. I used 1 1/2 in the Failed Soup, and put the other two in the fridge for later this week.
I needed to use up some of the too many apples that my m-i-l keeps bringing over, so I decided to use apples with the squash. I used 1 1/2 granny smith -- 1/2 because J and I used the other 1/2 for our breakfast oatmeal! :) I peeled and cored the apples, then sliced them thin.
I peeled the pumpkin squash, scooped out the insides, and the cut each half into rings and the rings into thirds.
I chopped the onion and minced the garlic and ginger. I put those into the crockpot after I heated it up and added some olive oil (letting the oil get warm first). I let them "cook" for five minutes before adding everything else.
Add all the other ingredients, stir well, put on low to cook. Stir once more before going to bed. (This is where I think I went wrong. The cooking for many hours killed the soup, I think.)
In the morning, turn to warm, and use immersion blender to puree half the soup.

It smelled funky. I put a bunch in a container for me to take to work, with red quinoa. We'll see how it tastes in a little bit...but I was not subjecting J to this today. I told D not to even bother trying to feed it to her. We still have Saturday's wonderful stew (I will post about that later), so she can eat that today. :)

My Legume Love Affair Round Up for October is Posted!!

2009-11-03T14:47:00.006-05:00

As I mentioned on Halloween, I entered my sweet black bean chili in my first blog event -- My Legume Love Affair # 16 (October 2009). Jeanne from Cook Sister! just emailed to let me know that (drumroll please)

The Round Up is posted here!

Woo hoo!

Now, to improve my photography skills for my next blog event entry. :P

Quinoa Stuffed Squash

2009-11-03T11:35:00.008-05:00

Monday night for dinner, I made stuffed squash for me and D. (J ate some golden orange soup.) I also sauteed up some swiss chard and kale that I mixed up with some quinoa, and made some baby red potatoes.

I needed to use up some more of the golden orange soup from last week (it's getting on in age there). That's actually what inspired this whole meal. D had made J the soup for dinner, and I was looking at it thinking that it would be a good base for squash stuffing. I had been dreaming about stuffed squash all day at work. Dream, meet the means.

Ingredients for the stuffing
1 cup cooked red quinoa
1 cup golden orange soup
3 Swiss chard leaves
1/2 pomegranate
1/4 cup golden raisins
1-2 T pine nuts

Ingredient to be stuffed
1 carnival squash

What I did
To start, while feeding J dinner, I rinsed and cooked one cup of red quinoa. I think the red quinoa is just so pretty. Rinsing is essential, as I've learned. It takes the bitter coating off the small grains, so that they taste MUCH better!
I also washed, rolled, and julienned three mixed Swiss Chard leaves. I then quickly and lightly microwaved steamed them (one minute at 5 power). First ingredient into the bowl.
Looking around the kitchen, I wanted something sweet and thought, raisins! I pulled out my organic golden raisins and put approximately 1/4 cup into the bowl of stuffing wonders. Then J added some to her soup. And some pine nuts (I had already taken those out of the fridge to add to the squash.)
I had a pomegranate that my mom bought me, sitting on the table, just waiting for something to be made with it, so I used half it, scooping/pulling out the little pom gems and any juice that came along. More sweetness and a little bit of liquid.
I added a cup of the golden soup to my bowl of stuffing wonders.
(Sometime while preparing the stuffing and cooking the quinoa, I pre-heated the oven to 410F.)
I cut the carnival squash in half and scooped out the seeds and string. (It did not want to be cut! J thought it would be funny to keep poking me as I was struggling with the huge knife and the not-to-be-cut squash. It was not funny.)
When the quinoa finished cooking, I took one cup of it and added it to my bowl of stuffing wonders -- chard, raisins, pom, and golden soup -- mixing everything together well. (I saved the rest of the quinoa for other purposes.)
Then I spooned the mixture into the squash halves, topped each with some pine nuts, and placed them in my brownie/roasting/all-purpose pan with a bit of water (maybe 1/2 - 1 inch). (I had enough of the stuffing mixture left to fill another squash half. I saved the stuffing for J to have for lunch today.)
I popped the pan in the oven right before I went to put the girls to bed. If I was going to be in the kitchen, I would have covered the squash with foil for the first 20-25 minutes of roasting, but I didn't want to give D any more complicated directions than, take out when the timer goes off.
I set the time for 40 minutes. This is another step that I would change. I would set it for 50 minutes instead, or maybe even 60. D turned off the oven after the 40 minutes (I was still getting the girls to sleep), but didn't take the squash out. I don't know how much longer they sat in the oven, but it was all good. [I would add the extra ten minutes because, although everything was cooked, the squash (bottom) could have been a little more tender. Just my preference. :)]

For the side greens and quinoa, I was inspired by a recipe for Swiss Chard in Dreena Burton's Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan.
I saved the rest of the chard and kale that I could (that's what I get for forgetting about two bunches in the crisper!), washed and dried the leaves, rolled and julienned them. I heated my saute pan, added some sesame oil, and when it was warm, added the greens and some salt and pepper. I sauteed them for 2-3 minutes, then turned off the heat and added a bit of Bragg's and some more sesame oil. When I put them on the plates, I added in some more red quinoa and mixed together. (The Bragg's was a bit overpowering without the quinoa, so note to self: don't use Bragg's next time. Buy some tamari.) D and I ate dinner as the night wore on, adding in some sourdough bread (thanks Rita!) with Earth Balance and Tofutti cream cheese and the baby red potatoes slathered with Earth Balance. All together, very filling. But I should have made the potatoes with everything else, so that we could have been filled up at one sitting. Lesson learned, to be employed next time. And the stuffing was quite delish - toasty pine nuts, splashes of juice in the pom seeds, softened raisins...

Operation Chocolate Covered Kindness!

2009-11-03T11:11:00.008-05:00

Chocolate Covered Katie is having a Page View Charity Drive!

How it works: Every time someone views a page on her blog, Foodbuzz pays her a little bit of money. She's going to send all of the money raised this month to The Enough Project.

The goals of the Enough Project are to end genocide and stop crimes against humanity.

So check out Chocolate Covered Katie's blog and look at all the neat pages and suggestions. Yummy food and raising money for a charity!

Halloween Happiness

2009-10-31T16:19:00.010-04:00

It's Saturday, October 31 --- Halloween! Happy Halloween!!

I made Halloween Chili (aka Sweet Black Bean Chili) and Sweet Potato Spelt Biscuits for dinner. A black bean chili that looks blood red with orange sweet potatoes and squash peeking through, paired with quick and easy biscuits. I've been dreaming about making this chili all week.

I'm also entering (is this the right word) it in my first Blog Event, My Legume Love Affair, an event created by Susan at The Well-Seasoned Cook and hosted this month by Cook sister!.

Sweet Black Bean Chili
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups dried organic black turtle beans, picked through and soaked for one day
5 1/4 cups water
2 bay leaves
1 tsp ground cumin + shakes
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon + shakes
1/4 tsp Mexican chili powder
28 oz crushed organic tomatoes
2 sweet potatoes or yams
1 small orange squash
2 T olive oil
1 small yellow onion

What To Do
Pick through and soak the black beans at least the night before (if not more). Change the water once or twice. Drain, then place in large LeCrueset with 5 1/4 cups of water and two bay leaves. Cook for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. To see if your beans are finished, you can take one out and blow on it. If the skin comes off, the beans are done. You can also taste them! My beans, fresh from the Cayuga Pure Organics farm stand at my farmers' market, took a little more than an hour to cook. When they are cooked, remove one cup of beans and set aside for another recipe. Keep the remaining water.
While the beans are cooking, peel sweet potatoes, then chop them into 1 inch or 1/2 inch pieces. Peel the squash, cut it in half, scoop out the insides, and then chop into 1 inch or 1/2 inch pieces.
The beans are done and you've removed the cup of cooked beans. Add the sweet potato and squash, the spices, and the crushed tomato. Stir well to combine, then cover with tipped lid and cook on medium-low heat.
Chop the onion. Heat up a saute pan over medium-low heat, then add the olive oil. When warm, add the onion and sprinkle on the ground cinnamon and ground cumin (as much or as little as you like). Saute for approximately five to seven minutes, until the onion is soft and fragrant. Add the onion to the large pot. Stir to combine and continue cooking with the cover tipped. Total cook time should be approximately one hour to allow all the flavors to combine.

Sweet Potato Spelt Biscuits
Ingredients
1 cup freshly milled spelt flour (bought this morning at the farmers' market!)
1/2 cup organic whole wheat flour (King Arthur's)
3 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp sea salt
4 T organic vegetable shortening
1 medium sweet potato
1/4 cup vanilla (unsweetened) almond milk

What To Do
Scrub the sweet potato and cut off any bad parts. Cook it. I cooked mine in the microwave by piercing it many times and cooking it for five minutes at 5 power, then flipping it over to cook for another six minutes at 5 power. Mash it when it is finished cooking and eat the skins.
Mix the flours, baking powder, and sea salt.
Cut in the vegetable shortening until the flour mixture looks like coarse meal.
Mix in the mashed sweet potato and the almond milk with your hands.
Make 12-14 rounds for the biscuits and place on a cookie sheet.
Preheat over to 410, and then bake biscuits for 20 minutes.

Enjoy!

We (D, J, and I) had this for dinner. It was enough for us all and for D (several bowls) to not claim severe hunger later. Slightly sweet, but not overly so, and delicately spiced. Definitely something to make again.

Stuffed Manicotti

2009-10-31T00:31:00.005-04:00

Tonight I got to come home early, so I was able to make manicotti for dinner.

Last night, J and I made up the cashew cheese to use as the base for the stuffing. I took the recipe from Dreena Burton. I don't have truffle oil (really, who does?), so I used 1 heaping spoonful of nutritional yeast instead, and used 4 T of water. My blender sort of conked out though, and wouldn't blend, so I think my cashew cheese was a little less smooth than anticipated. Still tasty though! I stuck it in the fridge last night after making it with J.

Tonight, I cooked the manicotti (1/2 package, 7 pieces) according to the package directions. Well, two of the manicotti fell completely into pieces and another in half, so I think I got some faulty manicotti there. But I made it work with the five I had left. (Next time I'm looking for some large shells instead. Much less of a chance - I think - of them all falling apart on me.)

While my manicotti was in the water, I pre-heated the oven to 365 and I chopped and fried (in 2 T of olive oil) the tastiest (and funniest-looking) mushrooms. J and I picked them out at the farmers' market last Saturday (got to get ready for tomorrow morning!). I also chopped up a bunch of cilantro from last week's farmers' market buy. I took two handfuls of the cilantro and the fried mushrooms and added them in a large bowl to the cashew cheese, stirring with my wooden spoon. I took the manicotti out of the water after their allotted seven minutes and set them aside, saving the water. Then I stuffed the manicotti by hand -- none of that whole trying to use a spoon for me! I placed the five manicotti in a glass pie pan and covered them with basilico tomato sauce (that I got on sale last week). Then I baked the manicotti for 20 minutes.

While the manicotti was baking, I got the water boiling again. I washed and cut up the head of purple broccoli that J picked at the farmers' market last weekend (sensing a theme here?) and put it all in the boiling water, covering the pot. (Not all was in the water; some boiled, some was steamed.) The water, when the broccoli was finished, was purple, and some of the pieces of broccoli were no longer purple.

So, here's what tonight's dinner was for me, D, and J. Stuffed manicotti and broccoli. D said that it was good and he would eat it again, so I consider this a coup. ;) J ate it all ... eventually. I think she was put off initially because we told her it was pasta and cheese, but it doesn't look like the mac and cheese dishes I make for her! Like I said though, she ate it all, so everyone wins tonight. Yum!

And, I have leftover cashew cheese with cilantro and mushrooms because those two manicotti died in the pot. I ate some with triscuits as a snack after I got the two babies to sleep and I've put the rest in the fridge for a snack tomorrow or Sunday.

Heirloom Beans

2009-10-30T14:07:00.004-04:00

This past week, I discovered heirloom beans (on the internet, not in real life...yet!). Same idea as heirloom tomatoes, with which everyone is familiar, but BEANS!

I found a few sites that sell heirloom eating beans to the public. I'm placing a (pretty big) order with Rancho Gordo today that includes I think 10 different types of heirloom beans. I'm going to check out Becky and the Beanstalk for ideas on cooking with them.

Rancho Gordo (California)
Native Seeds
Seed Saver Exchange
Phipps Farm (California)
Zursum Beans (Idaho)

I like this idea of preserving beans. And from all that I've read, they should taste much better than the standard bean. They cost more (obviously) and the shipping can get to be expensive, but hopefully the taste will be worth it. Also, I'm going to keep my eyes and ears out for some East Coast heirlooms. I read about heirloom beans in NC and Tennessee, but didn't find any information on buying them. And I'm pretty sure that the beans sold at my farmers' market, while organic, are not heirloom. (They sell kidneys, pintos, garbanzos, and black turtle beans. Those are all standard beans.) Maybe I can make it out to the Union Square farmers' market during the week some day and see if any heirloom beans make an appearance.

J helped me pick through and soak some organic black turtle beans last night. I wanted to make a black bean chili today, but was not up to cooking the beans this morning (I just wanted to stay in bed), so if I make the black bean chili, it will be tonight. Oh, did I mention I want to include orange (sweet potatoes or winter squash) to make a Halloween-themed chili? I really need to get on that tonight! :)

Golden Orange Soup

2009-10-27T22:54:00.010-04:00

Well, the squash coconut casserole takes on a funny smell/taste after the first day. Still tastes good, but the smell is weird. I think it's the sage. J wouldn't eat much of it today at lunch, but she did eat the chili! D said she was "nursing her orange juice the whole time" but she ate a whole bowl of chili. :)

I ate another serving of the casserole, with plenty of black pepper and salt, for dinner. Lots of pepper totally masked the "sagey" taste/smell, so maybe it just needed more salt and pepper? Something to consider for the next time. I started dinner with this salad -- fresh tomatoes (thanks to my m-i-l), clover sprouts, chopped golden yellow squash, and the remainder of my nut sauce. Nutty and yummy.

So, I can't rely on leftovers for J to eat tomorrow. I have to make something new, even though I'm supposed to be working (I'm reading cases, yes I am!). I have a meal planned for when I have some time this week, but tonight's not it. She likes my mom's pea soup, so I thought I'd make that...but I don't have any green peas. So, I'm making a golden soup for her. It's based on a recipe I found years ago (maybe 2000?) in my food co-op's newsletter (I think) and my mom's great pea soup. I had yellow split peas on hand, but no parsnips (required for the circa-2000 pea soup recipe), and didn't have the green peas (required for my mom's recipe). I like pea soups because they are easy to put together, easy to cook, and taste great! Here's my new recipe:

Golden Orange Soup serves 8 (I am ambitious!)

Ingredients
1 lb organic carrots, peeled and chopped (2 1/2 - 3 cups)
2 cups frozen chopped celery (prepped before we went to Maryland a few weeks ago)
1 lb split yellow peas, picked over
8 cups water
4 bay leaves (I grew and dried these myself!)

What To Do
Teach D how to pick over beans, peas, and lentils, looking for small stones and any weird looking beans. (Take them out!) Put peas in large LeCreuset.
Peel and chop the carrots. Take the celery out of the freezer and portion out 2 cups. Add both carrots and celery to LeCreuset.
Add 8 cups of water and stir everything together. Add the bay leaves.
Turn on to medium heat and cover. Cook for an hour or so, uncovering after 30-40 minutes. Stir as needed to keep everything cooking and keep the peas from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Also, remove foam as needed. The peas should start to fall apart after approximately an hour. (Work in kitchen and enjoy the yummy smell; remember to stir between cases.)
Take bay leaves out and puree soup with immersion blender. I missed one of the bay leaves, and ended up with little pieces of chopped bay leaves after blending.
Enjoy with salt and black pepper. :)

Thoughts
This could be made in the slow cooker too, but we still have chili in it, so it wasn't an option for me.
I have to find my mom's pea soup recipe! :) Fall and winter mean pea soup. And chili. And pea soup. I feel like my mom's recipe had another spice or something in it that added to the taste of the soup...Mom?
And I really wish I had someone to share cookies with! I can't justify making cookies because I will eat them all up...just like I do with the bags of chocolate chunks that I buy every time I find them at the KeyFood...

Vegan Food Pyramid

2009-10-26T14:45:00.000-04:00

check out this vegan food pyramid!

Beans and Chili!!!

2009-10-26T12:20:00.005-04:00

Saturday night, I "dreamed" about making beans while I put the babies to bed. So, once they were finally asleep, I got out the beans and started them soaking:

2 cups garbanzos
1 cup small kidneys (or small chili beans)
1 cup pintos

Sunday morning, I cooked up the garbanzos and kidneys. 2 cups dried garbanzos are supposed to need 8 cups of water (plus one strip kombu) to cook. My pot only held the soaked beans and four cups of water, so I had to keep adding water as they cooked. 2-3 hours for garbanzos, so they were the first beans to start. (Lots of foam to scoop off!) Then, I started the kidneys. 1 cup dried kidneys to 3 cups water and one strip kombu. The soaking took away a lot of their bright red color, and the cooking some more. The kidneys were done in a little less than an hour and a half, before we left for the day to see a kung fu competition in Queens. The garbanzos got put on hold while we were out, and the pintos soaked some more.

When we got home around 6 Sunday evening, I finished up the garbanzos (another 20-30 minutes) and started the pintos. 1 cup dry pintos to 3 cups water and one strip kombu. They made the water really dirty looking...but seemed to cook just fine.

Why was I making beans? Well, two reasons. One: CHILI!!! Two: I don't have any canned beans any more, just dried beans, so I needed to make some and freeze them so I can actually cook during the week! :) I made the chili up this morning for D (and maybe J if it's not too spicy) for lunch. And lunch for me tomorrow!

Total yield from my four cups of dried beans:
5 1/2 cups cooked garbanzos (3 1/2 to the freezer)
2 1/2 cups cooked kidneys (1 1/2 to the freezer)
2 1/2 cups cooked pintos (1 1/2 to the freezer)

Slow Cooker Chili
2 cups cooked garbanzos
1 cup each cooked kidneys and pintos
1 small yellow onion, chopped
olive oil
1 large (28 oz) can crushed tomatoes
1 large (28 oz) can fire roasted diced tomatoes
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp Mexican chili powder
1/2 tsp + more ground cumin
some shakes paprika
2 small bay leaves

What to do
Turn the slow cooker on and add the olive oil. Add the onion once it's a little warm; add the spices. Stir together and let the onion and spices heat up for a few minutes if you can. Add the beans and tomatoes. Stir well to combine everything. Put the cover on and leave the slow cooker on high. Head off to work. Hope D remembers to turn it to warm at lunchtime! (He did!)

Thoughts
The Mexican chili powder, that I bought (at KeyFood) when my last chili powder ran out, is super spicy. And I mean SUPER. This chili, like my last, ended up too hot and spicy for J. I made it extra tomatoey (note the two LARGE cans of tomatoes) just for D, who loves beans and tomatoes. I had two small bowls (one is in the photo) of this for dinner, along with a bowl of the coconut squash casserole. Very satisfying dinner, and plenty of leftovers for lunch and dinner later this week.

Butternut Squash, Sweet Potato, and Spiral Casserole

2009-10-26T12:00:00.005-04:00

I needed something yummy to make with my butternut squash. And I needed to use up some of my roasted veggies from last week.

Ingredients
olive oil
1 medium-large organic sweet yellow onion, small dice
1 organic butternut squash (~3 pounds), peeled, seeded, and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
3/4 cup pieces roasted sweet potatoes and orange squash
1 14-oz can organic coconut milk
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1/4 cup Red Star vegetarian support nutritional yeast
1 tsp dried sage
12-16 oz organic tri-color spiral pasta
1/2 cup pecans, chopped and toasted
spelt bread crumbs

What to do
Tear up four slices of going-stale spelt bread that we got a while back at the bakery up at the farmers' market. Make small pieces (very small) and spread out on cookie sheet. Heat oven for 2 minutes at 250, then turn it off and place the cookie sheet with bread crumbs inside.
Heat large LeCreuset. When warm, add olive oil. When the oil is warm, add the diced onion and cook, stirring often, until soft (5-7 minutes). Add the butternut squash, coconut milk, salt, and pepper and stir. Cook for ~20 minutes, until the squash is soft. Add in the nutritional yeast and sage (crumble the sage between your fingers before adding it). Add the roasted sweet potatoes and squash and combine well.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to the directions and drain it.
If you are like me and making this all late Sunday night for lunch on Monday, here's what to do next:
Transfer the coconut squash mixture to the casserole dish that you will use to bake. Once the pasta is cool, put it into containers that can go into the fridge. Put everything into the fridge for Monday morning.
Chop the pecans. Get some sleep.
Wake up Monday morning.
Transfer the spelt bread crumbs into a bowl with J's help and let her put the pecans on the cookie sheet. Heat the oven to 365 and put the cookie sheet with pecans in for 5 minutes.
Microwave the coconut squash for 3-5 minutes on power 5 (so that you can mix it together with the nuts and pasta.
Transfer everything to the big LeCrueset again, and mix the pecans, coconut squash, and pasta together. Then put it back in the casserole dish. Wipe the edge. Let J cover the top with the spelt breadcrumbs.
Leave for D to bake (365 for 30 minutes) for lunch. J ate is for lunch and liked it, according to D.

I ate it for dinner -- YUM! This dish was very yummy (yummier than my photo shows). The different squash and sweet potatoes were delish. The pasta soaked up most of the sauce. The sage added an unexpected flavor kick.

Besan Crackers

2009-10-25T00:07:00.006-04:00

I based this recipe on the quackers crackers recipe from Have Cake Will Travel that I've made before. I wanted to try it with besan and also wanted to see about making them gluten-free and more protein-packed. We had crackers with vegan cheese and wax beans for dinner tonight.

Ingredients
2 cups besan (chickpea flour) (got a large bag at Desi Bazaar in MD last week)
2/3 cup nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp black pepper (should have used more)
2 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) Earth Balance
1/2 cup + 1 T soy milk

What To Do
Help J measure and combine besan, nutritional yeast (sprinkles!), pepper, and salt in large bowl. Let J mix and get besan on table. Clean up.
Let J add the Earth Balance stick, then cut it into the besan mixture with a pastry cutter. J tried to help with the cutting-in too, but it didn't work so well...I ended up finishing it up. It's ready for the next ingredient when it looks like coarse meal.
Then, add the soy milk and combine until dough forms. We started off mixing it with a wooden spoon and quickly turned to my hands instead.
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Split dough into two pieces. Roll out the first piece of dough on a parchment paper. I made this one pretty thin as I wanted crunchy crackers. I cut everything with my pastry slider thing into square and rombuses/rombi?, then transferred them all to a cookie sheet and baked for 18 minutes. J helped me spread them all out and added her finger prints. :P Roll out the second piece of dough while the first set of crackers is baking. The second I made thicker, and J helped me roll it out and cut. This set had lots of J fingerprints in it. We also made five large oval/circle-shaped crackers. I baked this set for 15 minutes. I also added some extra pepper on top of 1/3 of the crackers when they were baking (after eating the toasty first set and thinking, man these need more pepper!).

Saturday Farm Fresh Lunch

2009-10-24T15:11:00.005-04:00

It's Saturday! Yay! And I'm at home with the kids. Yay!

Breakfast this morning was a sweet potato muffin for J and an apricot scone for me from the Body & Soul stand/van at the Farmers' Market. The muffin was moist and yummy as usual, but they've changed the way they make them, adding apricots to the muffin instead of just on top of the muffin.

J does not like apricots. Normally, I can just take the one or two off the top and then she will eat without help (yay!). But not today. Today, she took a few bites and then came upon another apricot! So, instead of J eating all on her own, I had to take out each apricot and give her un-apricoted pieced. Breakfast took a little bit of time...

The apricot scone is not something I will be buying again unless I have jam with me. It was very dry and heavy...not very scone-like. I try something other than the sweet potato muffins every other time we get breakfast there. As usual, today's wasn't very good. Oh well.

After we finished breakfast, we did a little bit of market shopping, buying two tiny gourds for J, some winter squash from the organic farm, and some purple broccoli, Brussels sprouts, yellow zucchini, and yellow wax beans from another farm. Then a quick pit stop at home and off to the playground for the Halloween party! J was a ladybug and A a giraffe. It rained, so there weren't a lot of kids, and the sing-a-long/story time and parade didn't happen, but J had a great time!

Home for lunch: farm-fresh lunch!

Ingredients

Fresh from the market -- 6-7 Brussels sprouts & 1/2 medium golden yellow zucchini
From the fridge -- 1/4 cup cooked french lentils (from the risotto day) and 1/2 cup cooked couscous
1/2 tsp Italian herbs olive oil

What I did
Slice 6-7 Brussels sprouts very thinly. Cut medium golden yellow zucchini in half length-wise, then take one half and cut it into into thirds width-wise, then into small square-ish pieces.
Add olive oil to heated Le Creuset; when warm, add the Brussels sprout strips and small zucchini pieces and Italian herbs. Saute for a minute or so, then cover and let cook.
I should have added a little bit of water here, but got caught up with fixing J's Unicef Trick-or-Treating box, and smelled that it needed some water.
Race back to the kitchen (fortunately our apartment is small), add some water and stir. The Brussels sprouts and zucchini had just started browning, not burning, so it actually turned out pretty good. I added some more water with approximately 1/4 cup of the reserved lentils from earlier in the week and 1/2 cup of cooked couscous from the fridge. (Yay for having extra grains and beans cooked in the fridge!)
I turned down the heat to 4 and let it all cooked together for another 5 minutes or so.

J and I ate this yummy farm fresh lunch while A had some smashed roasted sweet potatoes and squash.

Now we are enjoying some hot chocolate (I found out yesterday that the Whole Foods in Manhattan sell vegan marshmallows, so I will be buying some soon) and watching Kiki's Delivery Service, J's favorite movie, as we hide inside from the rain.

Nut Butter Sauce with Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Squash

2009-10-23T13:42:00.007-04:00

Last night I ate the remaining Mushroom Risotto, topped with nutritional yeast, and roasted some root veggies and mixed up a quick nut butter sauce for J to eat today.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Squash
1 medium organic jeweled yam
1 large organic sweet potato
1 small organic sweet pumpkin squash
Wash and peel sweet potatoes and squash. Cut into small pieces. Place in brownie pan (my "roasting" pan) with a little bit of water; cover with aluminum foil. Put oven on at 365F and place pan on top rack. (Don't wait for the oven to heat.) Roast for 25 minutes, then remove from oven. When cooled, remove from pan and place in a container for the fridge, where they will sit until lunchtime when D breaks them out for J. And I break them out for A at dinnertime.

Nut Butter Sauce
Based on a peanut sauce from fatfreevegan
1/3 cup freshly ground almond butter
1/2 cup water
2 T Braggs liquid aminos
1 flower cube of frozen lime juice (that I prepared last week)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 inch fresh ginger, peeled and grated
Mix everything together in a container with a small whisk. Place in fridge for D to use on pasta and/or roasted veggies (above) for J's lunch.

Breakfast
This morning, J and I had hot cereal (Bob's Red Mill 8 grain) with pecans, dried cranberries, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, soymilk, and organic banana. A had rice cereal with breastmilk and a little bit of organic banana mushed in.

Mushroom Risotto with French Lentils

2009-10-22T12:05:00.005-04:00

Here's what I made for J last night (for her lunch or dinner today).

Ingredients
1 cup French lentils
several big shakes of Organic no-salt Seasoning
2 cups water

3/4 cup arborio rice
1 medium organic sweet onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced and coarsely chopped
3/4 -1 cup mixed exotic mushrooms, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cups water
olive oil

What I did
First, I cooked the lentils in my medium Le Creuset: combine water, lentils, and seasoning; cover; stir as needed until water is absorbed and lentils are cooked. When the lentils were finished, I transferred them to a medium glass bowl.
I then heated the olive oil in the same pan. When it was warm, I sautéed the onion for 4 minutes, and then added the garlic for another minutes. Then I added the rice to coat it in the oil and the mushrooms. I sautéed everything together for a minute or two, then added the water. I covered the pot partially and let it all cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally. When the water was absorbed and the rice creamy, I added 3/4 of the cooked lentils and stirred to combine. Then I turned off the heat.

Voila! Mushroom risotto with french lentils! And only one dirty dish! Woo hoo!!

It smelled good, so hopefully it will taste good too! I put the remaining lentils in another dish to save for another meal. :)

The verdict on this dish: too much of a mushroom flavor (and not enough of something else) for J. She ate it rather unwillingly, but ate it. I ate it with LOTS of nutritional yeast added, which made it taste a lot better. But noone gave J sprinkles for hers with lunch. Oh well.

Braised Brussels Sprouts and Asparagus with Beans and Couscous

2009-10-17T00:04:00.004-04:00

For dinner Thursday night, I made braised Brussels sprouts, asparagus, and beans with couscous. My mom also cooked a super-sweet acorn squash that I stuffed with couscous and yellow zuchinni sauteed in earth balance.

Ingredients
~1 lb Brussels sprouts
1 large sweet yellow onion
handful asparagus
1 can kidney beans
1 can pinto beans
salt
pepper
olive oil
Earth Balance

1 package whole wheat couscous
2 T Earth Balance
3 cups water
Mrs. Dash no-salt spice

What to do
First, wash the Brussels sprouts and remove the hard/damaged outer leaves. Then slice them thinly (3-4 cuts per sprout). This takes a while, but it's worth it.
Second, chop the onion into small pieces.
Third, wash and break off the hard ends of the asparagus and then chop the asparagus into 1/2 to 1 inch pieces.
Warm a pan on the stove and add olive oil and Earth Balance when warm. When the oil and butter is heated, add the onion and saute for ~five minutes.
Meanwhile, put the water in a separate pan to boil and add a little salt. Once it's boiling, add the Earth Balance and then the couscous and cook for two minutes. Turn the heat off and add as much as little Mrs. Dash (using what I have here at my mom's!) as you like. Mix the spices in and cover the pot to allow the couscous to steam and use up any remaining water.
Back to the onion pan. Add the strips of sprouts and pieces of asparagus and stir. Cover the pan and let everything cook for 10-15 minutes (until the sprout strips and asparagus are bright green). Add a little water if needed to keep from burning and stir a few times. Add salt and pepper to season.
Rinse and add the two cans of beans (~3 cups beans). Cook for another five minutes or so, until all is warm.
Serve the sprout strips, asparagus, and beans over the couscous with extra salt and pepper for everyone to season as they wish.
This was enough food me me, D, J, KA, B, and Mom for dinner. With leftovers. It was pretty tasty.

For the acorn squash, I sauteed some golden yellow zuchinni that my mom got at the farmers' market in Towson with Earth Balance, added some broken up pecans, and stuffed the squash (also a mom's purchase from the farmers' market). These acorn squash were super sweet and tasty.

Swedish Tea Ring

2009-10-16T23:42:00.003-04:00

So, I finally did it. I made Vegan Dad's Swedish Tea Ring. Well, almost.

I changed the filling -- adding two tsps of ground cardamon (because cardamon is the epitome of Swedish spices) along with the pecans, cinnamon, and sugar. I also used Earth balance stick margarine for all the shortening and margarine called for in the recipe (because that's what my mom had in her kitchen). I also used soft vanilla silken tofu (because that's all the Giant by my mom's house sold) and vanilla soy milk (because that's what my mom bought for us).

We're going to have it at brunch at Kerry's house tomorrow. Hopefully it tastes yummy!

I'm also going to try to make up a potato tortilla based on this recipe for brunch tomorrow. Few changes I already know I'm making: no nutritional yeast in my mom's house and none at the stores I got to today, so I'm going to use a combination of curry powder, tumeric, ground cumin, and onion (whatever my mom has around the house) in place of the tofu scrambler mix. Also, I have some Daiya cheeze that I need to use up, so that is going to be added to the tortilla. I haven't decided if I'm making a sauce yet. We'll see how tomorrow morning fares...

Recipes/Food I Want to Try/Make

2009-10-14T15:34:00.001-04:00

Things I want to make...

Edamame Pesto -- D said he would try to make this with me. Now to just find the time!

Tofu Coconut Cream Pie

Swedish Tea Ring-- maybe Thursday night/Friday morning (before Mom heads off to Boston?)

breakfast lentils -- changing up the breakfast routine

spring rolls

Rösti

spaghetti squash with black beans, corns, and kale

100% whole wheat no-knead bread

veganize butternut squash and apple soup

pumpkin and black bean casserole

mini vegan "meat"loaf (chickpea loaf)

Banh Mi sandwich -- D's favorite sandwiches...if I can get him on to a vegan version... :)

Traveling Prep

2009-10-14T13:46:00.010-04:00

Preparing for our trip down to Maryland (we leave tonight after dinner!), I needed to save some veggies that were sitting in the fridge.

I had a bunch (two bunches!) of organic celery (from the store) and four cute organic sweet peppers (from my organic farmer's stand).

I learned through the magic of google that you can freeze celery, so I washed and chopped up all the celery and put it in the freezer. (I also learned that celery loses its crispiness when frozen, but fortunately, I only use it in soups or stews, where it loses its crispiness anyway, so freezing is ok for me.)

I then halved, de-seeded, and cut into strips the yummy sweet peppers. My four peppers were red, red and yellow, yellow and green, and red and orange. J and I can eat them in the car or today or whenever (they will travel with us to Maryland). The photo is one of the yummy red peppers -- so cute and so sweet. Photo taken this time with my cell phone (the blackberry photo looked *really* horrible. Not that I'm claiming my cell phone photo is anything to write home about, but it's so much better than the other photo).

I also juiced my lime and lemons and froze the juice in one of those cute Ikea ice cube molds. This one was hot pink with flower shapes. J's been carrying it around like her new favorite toy, but I did this late at night, so she wasn't there to get all snippy with me for taking her pink tray! :P

Before we leave tonight, I need to do something about this huge squash I got from the organic farmer's stand. I noticed this morning (as I never left the apt) that it was starting to grow a white mold around the blossom end. I will have to search google and blogs to see what I can do to save it.

Cauliflower Potato Soup

2009-10-13T11:45:00.007-04:00

update 10/14/09: I ate this soup for dinner last night with some brown rice and Daiya cheeze mixed in. So yummy! Nothing needs to be changed in the recipe at all! Woo hoo!!

I bought the cauliflower to make this soup last weekend when we discovered Fairways. It was orange-yellow and organic. I've never seen cauliflower that color before. And yes, the soup really is that color (it's not just my sad blackberry and the weird lighting in my kitchen, like most of my photos).

Ingredients
1 head organic cauliflower
2 medium organic potatoes
1 red onion
3 large cloves garlic
1 Rapunzel sea salt vegetable bouillon block
olive oil
water
soy milk
1/4 - 1/3 cup nutritional yeast

Prep: Chop the cauliflower and potatoes. (I didn't peel the potatoes, but I'm sure you could if you wanted to.) Chop the onion like I described yesterday (based on this tutorial) and mince the garlic.

Cook: Heat a heavy bottom pot; when warm, add ~2 T olive oil. When that is warm, add the onion. Saute until translucent. Then add the garlic and saute the garlic and onion until fragrant. Add the chopped cauliflower and potatoes. Add enough water to cover the veggies, but some potato/cauliflower should still be sticking out of the water level. Add the bouillon. Stir, and cover for 5 minutes or so to bring to a boil.
Once boiling, remove the cover and stir to beak up and distribute the bouillon. As the vegetables soften, add the nutritional yeast. Once the veggies are soft, if too much water remains, turn up the heat and let it boil off.
Use your handy-dandy immersion blender to blend everything together. Add the remaining soy milk (probably 1/4 cup) to the soup and stir to blend. After tasting, I added a little black pepper. Not much, just a little bit.

Thoughts: The soup was good, but I feel like next time I need to do something a little different. The recipes I looked at when creating this soup called for additional things like sweet peppers, roasted red peppers, cashews, miso, leeks... Maybe next time I will add one or more of those. But it was good as I made it. Hopefully J will like it today. (D taste-tested with me last night and approved of the soup.)

Roasted Root Veggies and Squash - and Squash Seeds

2009-10-13T11:14:00.005-04:00

Last night, before putting J to bed, I cut up two Japanese radishes (one yellow/white/green and one purple - daikon?), one sweet potato, and one Japanese orange/green pumpkin squash (all organic, all from my favorite Farmer at the market). I've been reading about roasting vegetables and really wanted to try it myself. Also, my veggie bin in the fridge was filled up with almost too-old veggies (the radishes) and my potato/onion/squash bin was also overflowing. And did I mention that my in-laws arrive today, and my m-i-l always brings more veggies with her? :)

So, while J ate some soy yogurt (one day I will try my hand at making that!), I scrubbed and cut up the radishes and sweet potato. I put them in my brownie tray, with J's help. (This was one of the things holding me up from roasting veggies before. Everything I read calls for a roasting pan. I don't have a roasting pan! But, I decided that my brownie pan should work just as well. And, I remembered that I used my brownie pan for cooking acorn squash and spaghetti squash in the oven. It worked.)
Then, I peeled the pumpkin squash (thanks Mom for the great peeler!) without cutting myself. My hands were orange by the time I finished cutting up the pumpkin squash, but that's ok. I scooped out the seeds and put them in a bowl for later. J help me arrange the pumpkin squash in the pan. Finally, I added some water.

I had preheated the oven to 425. I put the pan in for maybe 15 minutes, then covered it with aluminum foil and set the timer for 20 minutes. D took the veggies out while I was getting J to sleep. I tasted them after they were cooled (while I was making the next thing) -- the pumpkin squash was melt-in-your-mouth soft and sweet, the sweet potatoes amazingly soft and sweet, and the radishes tangy but not too sour and still crisp. Yum!

Much later (after dinner with D, making soup, and watching Eureka), I took the squash seeds and (after getting the remaining squash flesh off them) spread them on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. They were *really* bright orange. I put them in the oven at 400 and let them roast for a while. I haven't gotten to try them yet, but I'm sure they are yummy too.

Monday Breakfast Smoothie

2009-10-12T11:54:00.003-04:00

This morning J and I made smoothies for breakfast.

1 cup soy milk (Greenway brand...organic, not sure where my m-i-l bought it)
1 cup lots-of-pulp orange juice
~2 heaping T ground flax
~1 heaping T ground hemp
2 large spoonfuls freshly ground almond butter (we discovered Fairway last weekend and I ground and bought fresh almond butter and peanut butter!)
3/4 - 1 cup frozen raspberries (the rest of our bag)
1 1/2 frozen bananas
3/4 - 1 cup frozen blueberries (the rest of our bag)
1 frozen kiwi

Blend. Enjoy!

And remember to buy more frozen fruit when the KeyFood has them on sale.

Braised Greens and Pinto Beans

2009-10-12T10:48:00.005-04:00

Sunday night, after finishing off my creamy cheezy sauce from last week with some pasta for dinner last night, I made up some greens and beans for me and J to eat Monday.

The photo is in my sunny office window looking out over midtown Manhattan. The waffle building...what a wonderful morning sight.
I had meant to make up some bulgar or barley this morning to have a full meal, but ended up making smoothies with J and changing lots of diapers. :P

Ingredients
1 large bunch organic greens from the farmers' market (can't remember the name of these ones)
1 medium yellow onion
2 large cloves garlic
2 cans organic pinto beans
salt & pepper
olive oil
apple cider vinegar

What to do
First, wash the greens and shake off the water. Then, cut out the middle hard stem. Place a few leaves together and roll up. Repeat until the bunch of greens is all rolled up into various rolls and all the stems are in the compost bag. Slice the rolled greens thinly (like slicing a zucchini) and then cut the slices in half or quarter (depending on the size and how large you like your pieces of green).
Chop the onion. I tried using a method I saw on a blog a few weeks ago, which worked relatively well. Slice off the top of the onion. Peel away the outside of the onion as you normally would, but don't cut off the end/bottom of the onion. Slice carefully down towards to the end, being careful not to cut through the end. Then, do the same thing perpendicularly. The end should still be on, and the onion have grid-shaped cuts. Then, slice parallel to the end of the onion, giving you a nice small dice of the onion.
Mince the garlic.
Heat a deep pan that has a cover. Once warm, add the olive oil and let that warm up before adding the onion. (Medium high heat)
Add the onion and saute for approximately three minutes, until getting translucent and soft.
Add the garlic and saute for another minute or so. The onion and garlic should be wonderfully fragrant.
Add the greens, mix, and cover. Reduce the heat to medium low. The greens are going to need approximately ten minutes to cook. During this time, stir to make sure that they don't burn or scorch. Add a little water if needed. At about the seven- or eight-minute mark, add a splash of apple cider vinegar (it takes away the bitterness - if any - of the greens).
While the greens are cooking, rinse the beans in a colander in the sink. Pick out any that look suspicious (like really dark or small or anything).
After the ten minutes are up, add the beans. Add a little bit of salt and pepper. Cook, uncovered, for 3-5 minutes.

Update: I ate the braised greens and pinto beans for lunch today with some saffron rice, long broccoli flower-things, and pea pods (thanks to my friendly cafeteria for not putting any animal products in them today). Very yummy. I ate it cold, and don't think that the temperature made any difference to the taste. I think that I might add a little more pepper next time, but I'm very judicious with it when making food for J after that first cheezy quackers attempt.

ABP2 Muffins

2009-10-12T10:19:00.006-04:00

Last night, I made up some yummy muffins. The recipe I was going to make called for appples and applesauce, but my applesauce had mold growing in it (as I found when I was going to give some to A with her rice cereal -- boo) and I only had one apple. What I did have was: two almost too-ripe pears, one almost too-ripe apple, and two super-ripe bananas. So, I made apple-banana-pear-pecan (ABP²) muffins.

Ingredients
2 T ground flax
6 T water

2 super ripe bananas
1/3 cup canola oil
1/4 turbinado sugar
1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups organic all purpose flour
1/2 organic whole wheat flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 T baking powder

1 apple
2 pears
~1 cup pecans (might have been more -- I just used what was left in my jar)

What to do
First, blend the flax and water together until frothy in your blender or food processor.
Then add the other "wet" ingredients (bananas through vanilla) to the blender and blend until creamy.
While blending, before blending, or after blending, mix the dry ingredients in a small/medium bowl with a wooden spoon.
Peal and chop the apple and pears, cutting out any bad spots. Make the pieces small. Chop the pecans.
Pour the creamy blended liquid into a big bowl and add the dry flour mix. Don't over mix to combine, but make sure there aren't any pockets of flour left.
Add the chopped pecans, apples, and pears. Have D fold everything together while I line the muffin pans. Oh! Don't forget to pre-heat the oven! I preheat to 365, because, as we all know, my oven thinks that is 350.
Spoon the batter into the lined muffin tins. This recipe makes 12 big muffins.
I baked my muffins for 27 minutes. The recipe that I based these off said 20 minutes, but my muffins were still sticky in the middle when I poked them with toothpicks. So they kept baking. :) Check your muffins after 20 minutes with a toothpick to see how long they will take.

As you can see from my (sad blackberry) picture, the muffins are very light in color. They are yummy (had one for breakfast this morning with my fruit smoothie) and lent a gentle fall aroma to the apartment as I baked last night. The 20 minutes I had set them for was enough time to eat all the remaining batter (YUM!), clean up and put everything away, and still have time to make and enjoy a cup of tea. :)

I want to learn how to cook Indian food

2009-10-06T16:17:00.004-04:00

When I have time and a life again...and maybe a new home...I'd like to start learning how to cook some Indian food. I just found this site today -- Manjula's Kitchen -- all vegetarian (and looks like a lot of vegan and can-be-made-vegan) recipes and techniques for cooking Indian food. I will totally be using this site when I can start devoting some time to learning. :)

In other news, I had pasta with the cheezy sauce that I made yesterday morning. It was delish (especially after not eating for some many hours). D said that J ate it up too. :) Yay!

food

2009-10-05T23:25:00.003-04:00

I made up a cheezy sauce and sauteed some mushrooms for J. Looks like I will be eating the same for dinner, as i haven't gotten to eat anything yet, it's already 11:30pm, still at work, all restos closed here in midtown, and no restos will be open in BK when I get home.

ingredients
1/2 cup raw cashews
2 T sunflower seeds
2 T pine nuts
2 cups soy milk
2 T olive oil
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1 package medium firm tofu
some stone ground mustard (~ 1tsp)
1/2 tsp tumeric
1 tsp paprika
some garlic powder
2 T brown rice miso
1 tsp salt
1 T cornstarch

Blend it all together in blender. Leave for D to heat up with some pasta for J. Saute some mushrooms with olive oil to go with pasta and sauce.

Quackers part 2

2009-09-29T15:37:00.003-04:00

Saturday night when I got home from work...Saturday night after I got home from work and put the girls to bed, I made another batch of the quacker crackers.

This time, I used my organic vegetable shortening and half the pepper. I also cut the crackers smaller.

I cut the shortening into the flour/nutritional yeast mixture using my pastry cutter and then my hands. I also used soy milk instead of water this time. (I used shortening this time because I was out of Earth Balance, and used water last time because I was out of soy milk!)

I still just used my hands to press the dough out on my parchment paper instead of rolling with my pin. I like the texture. :) I cut the dough into tons of small diamonds and baked at 365 for 15 minutes. I would have left them in for a few more minutes, but A had woken up, so I was nursing her and had asked D to check them when the 15 minute-timer went off, telling him that they might need more time. He ignored that direction, and just took them out. So, they weren't as toasty as I would have liked them. BUT....

J loved them! She just kept eating them up on Sunday. Even when she wouldn't eat anything else, she would eat the crackers with vegan (follow your heart) mozzarella cheeze. Yay! She calls them quackers, and then starts qacking and making her little arms into duck wings. haha!

Cheezy Crackers

2009-09-25T12:50:00.004-04:00

To calm myself last night after spending two hours trying to get J & A to sleep, I made crackers. The recipe is from Have Cake Will Travel.

They were quick and easy to make, and baked right up in my oven (365 b/c the temp is off for some reason). The apartment smelled very cheezy as the time approached to take them out (18 minutes -- I checked at 15, but they weren't ready yet).

They are spicy -- or as I kept saying to D, peppa, peppa, peppa! Next time, I will not use nearly as much peppa. J tried one this morning, chewed it up, and promptly spat it out on the kitchen floor, getting some on her hot pink tutu (thanks to tata and gramma for the tutu). She has been wearing the tutu every day this week because she wants to be pretty and spin pretty. (Today she wanted to be pretty and spin pretty and small.) She said they were too spicy, but then asked for another when D, J, and A walked me to the subway this morning. That one promptly ended up on the sidewalk, so we left it for the pigeons, and I gave her another from my stash. She clutched it and wouldn't hold my or D's hand with that hand, instead using her key-holding hand to hold hands as we crossed streets. We'll see if she ever ate it or just clutched it (or dropped it). The rest are at work with me (and being quickly consumed), so if she dropepd it, she's not getting another from this batch!

I might eat them all today. I've been snacking on them all morning, and they were basically dinner last night too...Fortunately, they are EASY and QUICK to make, so I can make them again in less than 30 minutes.

Too bad I didn't have any cute cookie cutters to use for them. I just used a pastry scrapper and cut them into diamonds, as you can see above. Also, I didn't roll out the dough, I just pressed it down with my fingers, which resulted in an uneven surface. Didn't hurt the taste at all, and meant less for me to clean up later, so I plan on not using a rolling pin unless ABSOLUTELY necessary (like if I find super cute tiny cookie cutters). I will, however, cut them smaller next time. The larger diamonds are a little soft in the middle (still taste good), but I find that I like the crunchiness of the smaller ones. They also got a little toasty on the edges, bringing out the cheezy flavor even more!

Recipes/Food I Want to Try/Make

2009-09-24T12:11:00.017-04:00

French Toast

2009-09-23T14:04:00.003-04:00

Can you tell it's a little slow at work for me today? :P

So I've been craving french toast the past week. I looked at a bunch of recipes over the past few days and decided to try my hand at my own. Also, I bought a loaf of whole wheat bread by accident (I meant to buy multi-grain, but picked up the wrong loaf), so I needed to use it up. I got up early enough this morning to try my hand at french toast.

Ingredients
1 cup soy milk (8th Continent vanilla)
2 T nutritional yeast
2 T ground golden flax seeds
2 T garbanzo bean flour
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

5 slices whole wheat bread

safflower oil for frying

What I did
First, for the dipping mixture I picked a large glass bowl that would fit my bread slices. Then, I added the first five ingredients, with J's help, and whisked them together. I put maybe 1/4-1/2 inch safflower oil in my pan for frying and got it all nice and hot. I dipped my first piece of bread into the bowl and covered both sides with the mixture, then placed it in the hot oil and fried it. One side, then the other. I blotted it on a paper towel when I took it out of the pan, and served it to J with Earth Balance and organic maple syrup. I know something is a hit with her when she eats it all by herself, which she did! :)
Repeat with the remaining pieces of bread.

What I learned was that the other four were much more like the french toast I remember. I think that the mixture sat a little longer and firmed up, so it made those four pieces a little better. Not that J didn't love hers, but the mixture was more watery with the first piece and less so for the remaining. Next time, I will probably let the mixture sit for a few minutes before making the piece.

I ate two pieces of this, which were great. My first was still a little soggy in the middle, so I will fry it a bit longer next time. I used the deeper oil to fry (rather than just a bit to keep it from sticking) for two reasons. First, my pans are really sticky, so everything is sticking. (Note to self, need to research SAFE non-stick alternative). Second, one of the recipes I looked at when making my own was for Indian-style french toast. In addition to the crazy spices (which I might try at some point), the author suggested using more oil for the frying, based on her parents' use of several inches of oil for frying french toast when she was a kid. The extra oil really worked and nothing burnt to my pan and the french toast didn't burn. So, yeah, I probably used more oil than necessary, but I can adjust that as time goes on. The not-sticking was definitely worth it!

Wednesday's Soup

2009-09-23T11:53:00.010-04:00

Update: Photo added and cooking time
No creative or descriptive title for today's concoction. Maybe I will come up with something after trying this at dinnertime. (Here's hoping I'm home for dinner!)

I found canary beans at the Key Food last night and *had* to buy them. They were this great yellow color and looked a little like butter beans. Then I googled recipes, but wasn't interested in making Peruvian stew today. Might try it another day, once I've mastered the whole seitan-making-process, as the recipes all called for various types of meat. (Last night was supposed to be my initiation into the seitan-process, but J wasn't sleeping well, waking up every few minutes, and then woke A up, so by the time they were completely asleep, it was well after 10:30 and I wasn't up for trying to make seitan any more.) Besides, I really wanted to make a potato soup.

So, in between the cleaning and the moving of our futon and the boxing up of things and the moving of other things (we are in the process of emptying our apt to prep and sell it), I got all my ingredients together in my head. I also really wanted to use my sweet potatoes because they were starting to sprout and my m-i-l always puts them in the fridge at that point, taking up valuable fridge space unnecessarily.

Unfortunately, by the time we were finished with the cleaning and moving and boxing, it was after 2am. I did remember around midnight to put one cup of the canary beans to soak.

So, this morning, I cooked the beans for approximately an hour and a half, with the kombu. After putting A down for her morning nap, I chopped the veggies and put the rest of the soup together before I left for work.

(photo taken with my blackberry, so it's a little grainy)

Ingredients
1 cup dried canary beans, picked through, soaked overnight
1 small piece kombu
1 large white onion, roughly chopped
olive oil
1 large yukon gold potato, roughly chopped
2 medium sweet potatoes or yams, roughly chopped
1 1/2 or 2 cups vitamin greens, chopped in food processor and frozen months ago
1 can coconut milk + 1/2 can water
2 handfuls of unroasted, unsalted, organic peanuts

What I did
I soaked the canary beans overnight. I was a bit disappointed this morning to see that the soaking took away their yellow color and made them really just look like butter beans.
I cooked the beans with the kombu while I made french toast for me and J.
I chopped the onion and sauteed it in olive oil in my big Le Creuset while I cut up the potato and sweet potatoes . I added the chopped potatoes to the Le Creuset.
Then I added the beans and cooking water, the can of coconut milk, and 1/2 can of water (to get all the coconut goodness into the pot).
I then added the vitamin greens (from my favoriate organic farm at the Farmer's Market; she says they are a Japanese green and the name translated into english is literally vitamin greens), which I had chopped in the food processor when I got them in June and froze for use in soups. :)
Finally, I added two handfuls of peanuts from my peanut stash.
I couldn't decide on a spice to add to the soup, so I left it alone. Told D to check the soup and add water if needed to keep the veggies cooking. I also told him to check at lunchtime to make sure the potatoes, sweet potatoes, and beans were all cooked before serving it, and left the soup covered on 4 on my simmer burner.

At work, I decided that saffron would work well with everything, so I called and asked D to add a few threads. We'll see if he did later, and we'll see how this soup tastes, later.
My serving suggestion: two scoops of brown rice (which we have from Monday) and soup.

Update 9/24/09: I had the soup - well, really a stew, for lunch today with brown rice. (The photo is from my lunch.) It was VERY filling and tasted pretty good. The only thing about the taste: someone left the stew on until 8-something last night, and it burnt a little, so the stew had a slight burnt taste. Lesson learned -- next time, give D or his parents a specific time to turn the soup/stew off to avoid burning. I think that a little lime might go really well with this dish. Next time...

Eggplant Stewed

2009-09-22T11:50:00.003-04:00

I'm really not sure what to call this dish. I put it together when I left for work yesterday and D let it cook all day long (when I ate some at 9:30 last night, the burner was still on). It smelled divine and tasted divine as well. It looked...less than divine.

Ingredients
2 small eggplants, sliced and quartered
1 large zucchini, sliced and quartered
1 sweet pepper, chopped (I used a red, orange, and green pepper from the farmer's market)
1 small red onion, chopped
~1 T olive oil
2 cubes Rapunzel vegan bouillon with sea salt
herbes de Provence
1 cup dried small white beans
1 small piece kombu

Method
Sunday night, I put the cup of small dried white beans in a pot and covered with three cups of cold water to soak overnight.
Monday morning, I added the kombu and cooked the beans for an hour. I had to add some extra water while they were cooking to keep them under water.
Meanwhile, I chopped the onion and cooked it in the olive oil in my big Le Creuset. I also cut up the eggplant, zuchinni, and pepper, adding them once the onion was nice and fragrant. I sprinkled a bunch of herbes de Provence, and stirred everything well.
Then, I added the bouillon and 4-5 cups of water. When the beans were done (I checked by blowing on a few and seeing the skin come off), I added them and their cooking water to the Le Creuset. I left it on 4 on my simmer burner.
I put the 2 cups of brown rice with 5 cups of water in my rice cooker.
That's where my involvement ended. I told D to check the pot to see if it needed more water, and that it should be ready for lunchtime. D left it cooking all day, so it was really cooked down by the time I got home. J (and D I think) had it for lunch and I had it for dinner. Few scoops of brown rice topped with the stewed eggplant/bean mixture. Super yum, but not very attractive. Fortunately, my child does not judge based on appearances.

Did I mention that when I got home last night, I could smell the yumminess as I got to my front door? Sign of a good meal. :)

Grape Juice Pancakes

2009-09-21T17:33:00.006-04:00

Saturday I made grape juice pancakes with J's help. The first one got a little burnt, so I ate it (much to J's upset, who really wanted the first pancake). She got the much tastier and less black but still blue second pancake and ate it all up all by herself. no help requried when breakfast is this yummy! Our toppings are Earth Balance, organic maple syrup (Grade B), and organic powdered sugar. After I made three, I added approximately 1/2 cup frozen blueberries to the remaining batter, which J had been asking for after we used them in our smoothies. She spat out the blueberry blue pancake, so that was not a hit with her. I ate one though, and thought it quite tasty.

Simple recipe
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour (Bob's Red Mill)
1 1/2 cup organic unbleached King Arthur's flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 cups grape juice (you can use any juice; this is what we had in the fridge -- grape juice makes BLUE pancakes, orange juice YELLOW/ORANGE pancakes.

Mix the dry ingredients together. Then add the juice and mix together gently (don't overmix). Heat up your skillet/pan and add some sunflower oil. Add batter (between 1/4 cup and 1/2 cup per pancake) and make it as thick or thin as you want. When the top is all bubbly, flip. (Don't forget, as you're making the smoothies, to flip the pancake, or you will end up with a blackened pancake and a beeping smoke detector.) Serve with some Earth Balance and maple syrup. Let J sprinkle a little bit of powdered sugar on top to make the blue pancakes even prettier!
If you want, add in 1/2 cup or 1 cup frozen blueberries to batter.
Makes six pancakes.

Smoothies
1 cup soy milk
1 cup orange juice
4 really ripe bananas, broken in half
1 cup frozen raspberries and strawberries
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
2 heaping spoonfuls of ground hemp protein
3 heaping spoonfuls of ground golden flax seeds
1 really ripe avocado

Put everything together in a blender (start with the wet ingredients first). Blend and serve.
Makes 3 servings.
J loves her smoothies. This version used up our really ripe bananas; normally we use frozen bananas, which gives the smoothies a completely different consistency.