Banana apple pecan muffins

Jacqui had been asking to make muffins for the past few weekends, but we just haven't had the time to. I promised her last night that we would make muffins this morning for breakfast. We are lacking in fruit and veggies at the apt right now, so I looked around and decided to make banana and apple muffins. The muffins were soft and delicious, a perfect breakfast. And the girls loved actually making the batter and the muffins. Feels like a long time since we've done that together. 

Ingredients 

2 large ripe bananas 

3/4 large golden delicious apple, finely chopped 

1/4 cup applesauce 

1/4 cup organic canola oil 

1/4 cup blackstrap molasses 

1/3 cup vegan sugar 

1 cup all purpose unbleached flour 

1/2 cup spelt flour 

1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour 

3/4 tsp baking powder 

1/2 tsp sea salt 

1/2 cup chopped pecans 

What to do 

Preheat oven to 350. Gather ingredients and children. Have girls peel bananas into a large bowl. Given the forks and show them how to mash the bananas. Mash. Add the applesauce, oil, and molasses and mix well. Then add the sugar, flours, baking powder, and salt, and mix well. Mom or dad may have to help with this mixing to get everything combined. Add the chopped apples and chopped pecans. Have the girls put the liners in the muffin pan. Spoon the batter (after the girls have tasted it, of course) into the muffin pan. Bake for 20-22 minutes. Enjoy!

Asparagus risotto

Last night I made an asparagus risotto for the girls' dinner. 

Ingredients 

1 bunch fresh asparagus from the farmers' market, trimmed 

Olive oil 

Coarse sea salt 

Freshly ground pepper 

1/2 red onion, finely chopped 

2 T extra virgin olive oil 

1 1/2 cups arborio rice 

1/2 cup reisiling (also from farmers' market) 

3 cups organic vegetable broth 

Salt 

What to do 

Preheat oven to 425. Wash and trim the asparagus. Then toss with evoo, coarse sea salt, and freshly ground pepper. Roast for ten minutes. Let asparagus cool, then cut into one inch pieces. Meanwhile, in a heavy bottom pan, heat the 2 T evoo and cook the red onion. When it is soft, add the arborio rice and cook for two minutes. Then add the white wine (I used reisiling), stirring constantly. When the wine is cooked in, add the veggie broth, one or one-half cup at a time, constantly stirring. With last cup or half-cup, add the roasted and cut asparagus and salt to taste. Serve with salt And nutritional yeast. Relatively easy dinner, except for the constant stirring. Jacqui complained about the asparagus, but ate everything up. Aji ate a bit more than half her portion, but had gorged on coco bread right before, so she may have been legitimately full. I liked it too. Leftovers for lunch this week!

Mujadara

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!

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!

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

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

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! :)