First Week of February Granola

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!!

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

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

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

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

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

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!!!