Oh the things a day brings…

Today? Not so fun. It was the first day of classes. That was fine. Hindi 101 is going to end up being a pretty awesome class that I’m damn excited to take. The classroom was easy to find. The shuttle to the campus was easy to use.

And for a while the day’s “goodness” ended there. I got back to my apartment only to find that the school’s server had crashed (as it often does on the first day of classes). It took me til after 5 pm to get to my school email. Not happy. I checked my assignments. Got blasted with three new syllabi. You all should know by now that I am super high strung, and I freaked upon seeing all the semester’s coursework at once. I’m still freaked out by the apparent amount of work that I have to do over the next 3 months.

And to top it all off, I wasted a helluva lotta ingredients on a curry from Taste of the East that was just plain awful. It’s not even worth mentioning which one it was it was so bad. I ended up making my own…

Cheater’s Curry

Yields 5 cups

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup sliced onions (2 oz)
• 1 cup peeled and chopped sweet potato
• 3 cups chopped cauliflower
• 1 cup water
• a healthy pinch of sea salt
• a few cracks of black pepper
• 1 7oz can tomato sauce
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp ginger powder
• 1/4 tsp garam masala
• 1/4 tsp turmeric
• 1/8 tsp ground coriander
• an additional 1/4 cup or so of water to loosen up the sauce
• 1 tbs ketchup
• 1/2-1 tsp sriracha
• 1 cup cubed tofu, pressed if you prefer
• 1/2 cup frozen or fresh peas

Directions:

In a large cast iron skillet sprayed with cooking spray and maybe a tbs or so of water, sauté your sliced onion over medium heat until translucent. Add in your sweet potato, cauliflower and water (and salt and pepper…), cover and cook over medium until your vegetables are tender, which takes 20 to 30 minutes. Keep stirring and checking with a fork for tenderness. Once tender, add in your tomato sauce, your spices, optional additional water, ketchup and sriracha. Stir to combine everything together and cook for a minute or two. Add in your tofu and peas. Cook over medium until heated through. Serve alone or with rice.

It’s super inauthentic, but it’s a super tasting curry-like dish. I made it originally for lunches this week, but decided to also have a cup tonight. It was a nice warm-up dish after getting downpoured upon (another addition to today’s suckyness). Well. I’m exhausted. I’m a little nauseous. And I want to sleep. . I hope tomorrow is a better day.

[http://www.dietdessertndogs.com/2011/09/01/wellness-weekend-sept-1-5-2011-plus-an-event-update] <–Wellness Weekend Blogging Challenge!

Feelin’ a little macro…

I seriously have the best grandparents in the world.

I had no idea, but Grandfather has been growing me my absolute favourite squash for me! When mum came in today with some of the stuff that I forgot, she surprised me with a lovely buttercup squash and a butternut squash. Being squash obsessed, I couldn’t help but roast up half of one for a snack tonight. I had some kale to go with it because it’s wicked healthy (yay for snacks that pack a nutritional punch!) and wicked delicious!

Now I have to figure out what I’m going to have for lunches and dinners now that classes are starting tomorrow. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are days when I’ll be back at my apartment by the lunch hour, and tomorrow I have a meeting with the University’s vegetarian group at 5…so that should leave time to cook, right? I’m just anxious about changing up what I normally eat. What can I say…I’m a creature of habit. Sad but true. Anyways, I’m thinking a curry sounds good. I’ll probably whip up the Madras Curry from Taste of the East. We’ll see though.

 

 

 

*long exhausted sigh*

Well…pretty much all moved into the new apartment now! I gotta say, there is NOTHING more exhausting than packing up and then unpacking things when you move. It feel so…weird not being at home. I’m trying to acclimate to the new college apartment atmosphere, but it’s tough. I’m not a social person. It’s a little overwhelming. Plus, I’m no longer able to exercise for hours upon hours every day, which is throwing me for a little loop. But, hey. That might be better for me in the long run.

Food is another thing that’s got me a little freaked. I need to figure out something to make. I have a ton of ingreients here…all I need is an idea of how many calories I’m going to consume at one given moment in time. It seems arbitrary to most people, but I really dislike consuming a large amount of calories in one sitting. Yesterday I ended up eating veggies and a few pieces of fruit because I had no ambition to cook anything. Should I make some dhal and have leftovers for lunches and dinners throughout the week? I feel pretty unsure about things like that right now…silly huh? Worried about food more than I am staring classes. I only have one syllabus right now, and the class seems pretty intense. Hope I have time to cook and stuff still. I don’t wanna be a junk food vegan :\

Anyways, mum’s coming today with a few things I forgot, and Rigby’s marching band is performing at our football stadium with a bunch of other high school bands, plus the University MB (which rocks). All I’ve had to eat today was my usual b-fast of a cuppa coffee and some mushroom wraps. Unconventional but good.

Yesterday I had wraps for breakfast, another one for a snack about oh say…9 hours later, a big bowl of steamed broccoli with scrambled tofu on top, a shake sans the straw (I ate it super soft serve style!), a banana, 4 dates and a walnut. Hearty, I know, but I felt anxious and nauseous.

For the tofu, I dry-”fried” it in a cast iron skillet with a couple of spritzes of nonstick, a few dashes of garlic and onion powder, a squirt or two of braggs, and a pinch of Kala Namak (black salt). It’s an Indian sea salt (usually found in a fine ground powder) that gives dishes a sulfuric taste. Let me tell you, my tofu tasted like EGGS. Holy crap the awesomeness. Try the stuff out if you never have before.

Yum!

Yeah, I forgot to bring straws with me so I had to eat my frappe with a spoon. Not that that was a bad thing Just so you know… I think I’ve found the perfect ratio for a chocolate shake that tastes just like a McDonalds one. You need to do thish…

Better than McD’s Chocolate Shake

Makes one

Ingredients:

• 1 cup almond milk
• 1 tbs vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp chocolate extract
• 4 packets of stevia in the raw** (sweeten to taste with preferred sweetener)
• 1 heaping teaspoon of instant ESPRESSO (not coffee) powder (use the type of teaspoon that you eat with, not the type you measure with)

Directions:

In a plastic container that can hold 2 cups of liquid, pour in all of your ingredients and whisk together vigorously. Freeze until almost solid, scraping a few times over the course of an hour or so. When you scrape at it, there still should be a little liquid to make it blend-able. If it gets to solid, pop it in the microwave for 15 seconds or so to loosen things up. Then transfer to a blender and blend the hell out of it. Pour into a glass and enjoy the chocolatey deliciousness.

So yeah, that was good. A nice tasty treat. At that point of the day, I was 200 calories under what I should have had so I just had a banana, a walnut, and 4 pitted California dates. While watching Paul McCartney on SNL. That was fun.

So here’s to having a better day food-wise. And a picture of the pretty himalayan sea salt my granny gave me <3 She’s so sweet.

I love having a totally vegan kitchen.

Even more fun with pizza dough!

Except there is no trace of pizza this time.

Except there is no pizza to be found!

In fact, we had soup for dinner. I had the major urge to make on of the recipes out of Vegan Lunchbox. Anytime I see the word “cauliflower” or “soup” I’m automatically interested. So Jennifer’s Creamy Cauliflower Soup was automatically on my “to make” list. It was simple, convenient, healthy, and didn’t make to much. It’s definitely one of those foods that I’m going to be whipping up in my apartment for myself. The only changes to the recipe that I made were that I added a small squirt of sriracha and a tablespoon of ketchup, because I thought it was almost a little bland. I’d love to try it with either sweet potato or winter squash rather than just a white potato. Good recipe, though! Everyone liked it. Even Rigby. Who hates all vegetables. 10 points for team vegan.

But back to the pizza dough. I wanted to make some sort of roll to go with the soup, but I didn’t want to do plain old sandwich bread, biscuits, or burger buns made dinner roll size. So I thought…pizza dough! You can seriously do like a million things with the stuff (I should write a cookbook entirely about what to do with pizza dough!). I decided I felt like making some sort of garlic bread in roll form. And thus the Cheezy Garlic Spiral was born.

Cheezy Garlic Spirals

 

Yields: 8 rolls

 

Ingredients:

 

• 1/2 recipe basic pizza dough
• Enough garlic powder to have a thin even coat over the surface of the dough (1 to 2 tbs)
• A few shakes of onion powder
• A pinch of dried basil and dried parsley
• 1 tbs vegan margarine
• 3 slices of vegan mozzarella cheez (such as tofutti or galaxy nutritional brand)

 

Directions:

 

Prepare your pizza dough. Take half of that dough and give a quick kneed. Shape into a rectangle, around 10×6 to 11×7 in size. Shake on your garlic powder, onion powder, add your pinches of dried herbs, making sure to coat evenly. Dot on your margarine evenly amongst the surface of the dough. Take two slices of the mozzarella and cut each square into 4 pieces. Evenly lay the 8 mini squares of cheez over the surface of the dough. Roll and seal as you would a cinnamon roll.

 

Spray 8 cups of a standard sized muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray AND sprinkle in some cornmeal to prevent sticking.

 

Cut off the very knobby ends of the roll and discard. Cut the rest into 8 even pieces, placing one dough roll into each cup. Let raise for about a half hour to an hour (until they’ve pretty much doubled in size). Have your oven to 400F, and once your roll have risen, bake for 17 minutes. Now, take your last square of cheez, cut into 16 even mini squares, placing two atop each roll. Broil the roll to have the cheez melt. Enjoy!

I made the mistake of putting the mini squares of “cheez” on the top of the rolls when I baked them so that’s why they turned out all brown on top like in the picture. Still tasted good, but I would like to see it broiled, or at the very least put the cheez on top of the rolls during the last few minutes of baking.

 

But I still had half of a recipe of dough left, and Rigby didn’t want non-vegan pizza, and I had already made soup so pizza was out of the question. That meant only one thing tonight…dessert! That ball of dough was begging to be smothered in chocolate. I haven’t had a slice of it yet, but mum said it almost tastes like a cream puff. Which is kind of weird because how is pizza dough anything like cream puff dough? Whatever. Praises for it were sung, and thus it is worth posting about.

Chocolate Dessert Pizza

 

Yields 1 9″ cake pan

 

Ingredients:

 

• 1/2 recipe for basic pizza dough
• 1 packet of stevia in the raw (or 1 tsp sugar)
• 1/4 cup stevia in the raw(or sugar)
• 2 tbs cocoa
• 2 tbs corn starch
• a pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup water (or coffee)
• 1 tbs maple syrup
• 1 tbs vegan margarine (stick or tub)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup chocolate chips

 

Directions:

 

Prepare your pizza dough and take half (use the the half for another preparation). Spray a 9″ round pan with nonstick and sprinkle with cornmeal to prevent sticking. Shape your dough to fit into the pan and press in. Take 3 tbs of your chocolate chips, and make a circle of chips where the crust will be (as if your were making stuffed crust pizza…like that), and fold over to form a (you guessed it!) stuffed crust! Sprinkle your crust with the tsp of sweetener.

 

In an oven preheated to 400F, bake for 17 minutes. When it comes out of the oven, prepare the filling.

 

In a small saucepan, whisk together the sweetener, cocoa, cornstarch and salt. Mix in the water, stir together and set to medium heat, immediately adding the maple syrup and margarine. Stir constantly until a very thick pudding forms. Once it gets very thick, remove from heat and add your vanilla. Spread into the pizza crust, sprinkle with your reserved tbs of chocolate chips and cool before enjoying!

And just in case SOMEONE (ie one of the picky omnivores) was to oppose something I made tonight, I decided just to do a quick potato-onion roast because that’s a universally loved food. However, it wasn’t necessary as everyone enjoyed the meal (although I think dad took some potatoes…no matter).

What safer food is there to feed an omni than a potato? At least my potatoes don’t contain beef tallow like a certain golden arched fast food joint.

I'm healthy!

On a more serious note. As I posted in a very brief post this morning, I fundraising for our local chapter of the Farm Sanctuary’s Walk for Farm Animals and am looking for donations. The team I am heading has a goal minimum of $200 raised towards Farm Sanctuary. So, if you live in the Buffalo, NY area, please join the team if you are interested, and please please please I encourage anyone and everyone to donate even a small sum. Everything adds up and it goes to a great cause. If you want to find out more about what Farm Sanctuary does, visit their site. I would appreciate any donation not for me, but for all of the farm animals it would save. Thank you <3

 

 

 

2011 Buffalo Walk for Farm Animals

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey all! Quick post! I have started a team for my local area’s Walk for Farm Animals for Farm Sanctuary. My team (D Squared) has a current fundraising goal of $200. So if you are in the Buffalo, NY area and wish to join, go to my page and join team D Squared, or make a donation! Anyone can donate who is interested. If you would like more info, go to Farm Sanctuary’s Walk for Farm Animals Website. Thanks, and please donate!

2011 Buffalo Walk – DonorDrive®.

Lets face it…

Summer’s pretty much over with. Yea, it’s still pretty warm (for some of you down south/southwest it’s still effing hot), but I can feel my internal barometer shifting towards the autumn season. School is starting back up. The halloween candy is out in the store. Yup. Autumn is a-comin’. And this Saturday I’m making a big leap towards independence by moving into my first apartment, with classes starting on Monday. Picked up my books yesterday ($145 for all of my textbooks! HELL YEA! The perks of being a philosophy major…cheap books). Started packing today. This translates to…I have had no time to think about recipe making. In fact, I’ve done very little kitchen work at all. The most I did was whip up a batch of pinwheels for Rigby since she likes them for breakfast, make some soup, and a few little snacks like cabbage wraps.

The soup I made was half a batch of Alicia Silverstone’s Creamy Kabocha Squash Soup (made with butternut instead of kabocha. No kabochas in the store…yet.) It’s super simple, basically just boiled squash with sea salt all well mashed/pureed. Something I don’t feel bad about making/eating. This is the sort of thing that I’m going to have to make when I’m out on my own rather than the big-batch recipes that I usually make. No longer will I have to cater to an omni’s needs…I can make as much curry as I want!! **ahem**

Anyways. I have been trying for the past few days to pick out some recipes out of my favourite cookbooks that would be “safe” for me to have. Safe meaning small batch amount, healthy, and low in calories. My general criteria.

Side note: I’m kind of excited, I just did a cookbook swap with my friend from VegWeb, Amy. I traded two of my books for the two Vegan Lunchbox cookbooks by Jennifer McCann. I don’t know if any of you readers have any of her books, but they give lunch “meal” suggestions that are in the Japanese Bento style lunches (those cute themed ones). Even though I won’t follow through with a full meal, I think I’ll use these books as inspirations on what to bring with me to campus for lunch, if I’m not back at my apartment during the lunch hour. Anyways.

I should probably think about how I’m going to stock my pantry and fridge. I’m thinking I’ll stock my fridge with a bunch of types of leafy greens (kale, chard, romaine lettuce, cabbages, spinach), broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, winter squash, mushrooms, tofu, tempeh, carrots, daikon, mango, almond milk, nuts, dates, condiments…things like that. Stuff to make salad with. I have tons of whole grains (bulgur, barley, black rice, basmati rice, jasmine rice, quinoa, buckwheat, oats, oat bran, steel cut oats, polenta, millet) to have with veggies. I don’t intend on having many bread and flour products. I have a bunch of canned beans at the ready (black, kidney, dark kidney, pinto, butter beans, chickpeas, white beans, adzuki beans) as well as dry beans…I think I have enough to keep with a healthy diet! Oh the perks of not being in a dorm…

So what are your favourite foods to make just for yourself?

**Sorry if this post seems jumpy. I am just super tired and can’t think straight.**

Buenas días pastel de arándano!

Good morning blueberry cake! (thought it was gonna be a Spanish post, didn’t you?)

Awake now? Cake? For breakfast? Yeah, sure! Why not? I think that sometimes cake is a perfectly acceptable breakfast. Especially when it’s loaded with heart healthy oats, fibrous wheat germ, antioxidant rich blueberries, and no gross sugars and fat! It’s kind of like a blueberry muffin cake. Healthy AND delicious.

Breakfast Blueberry Mini Cake

 

Serves 4

 

Ingredients:

 

• 1/2 cup plus 2 tbs all purpose flour
• 6 tbs quick cooking oats
• 3 tbs sweetener (I used stevia in the raw)
• 1 tbs wheat germ
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp powdered ginger
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 5 tbs nondairy milk
• 2 tbs applesauce
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/8 tsp almond extract
• 1/3 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen

 

Directions:

 

Preheat your oven to 400F and spray a 4″ round pan with nonstick cooking spray (I used my mini springform pan).

 

In a mixing bowl, mix together your flour, oats, sweetener, wheat germ, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, and salt. Next mix in your nondairy milk, applesauce, and extracts. Carefully fold in your berries (unless you want burst berries which would result in a pretty purple cake <3). Spread into your pan and bake for 25 minutes.

Now I have to think about what to make for dinner. Should I be thinking about dinner at breakfast time? Am I just being anal? Am I the only one who feels like she needs a clearly laid out plan? Am I a control freak?! Ahh!!

Anyways. Suggestions for dinner, por favor?

 

Bread Baking 101

I love making bread. And I make sure to it that we have this particular loaf going at any given moment in time at my house. It seriously is a fantastic recipe, and I’ve had so many people say that it is some of the best bread they have ever had. It’s simpler than you’d think.

Sandwich Bread

Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients:

• 2 tbs sugar
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 1 packet (2 1/2 tsp) either active rise or quick rise yeast (both work)
• 3 cups all purpose flour plus more for kneading
• 1 cup water
• 2 tbs neutral tasting oil (I’ve actually made it without once accidentally and it worked out fine)
• 1/2 tsp salt

Directions:

First and foremost you have to proof your yeast. I use a glass cereal bowl. In your bowl of choice, dissolve together the sugar, 1/4 cup of water, and yeast. Allow it to bloom for around 10 minutes. I generally allow it to go longer, sometimes for around 20 to 30 minutes.

Next, in a large mixing bowl, combine your yeast mixture with one cup of flour, the 1 cup of water, the oil, and salt. Add in the remaining two cups of flour, stirring in-between each addition. When you can pretty much form something of a kneadable dough, turn onto a well floured surface and start kneading your bread dough until smooth and elastic (around 10 minutes), adding more flour as necessary.

Form into a dough ball…

…and place into a large-ish greased bowl, and cover with a warm, damp rag.

Leave your dough to rise in a draft-free area until it doubles in size (the time will vary depending on what type of yeast you use.)

When it has doubled in size, punch that sucker down like you’re punching Rick Perry in the face! (okay, maybe not that hard…just deflate it, mmkay?)

Now form into a jellyroll-ish shape, sealing the edges and seams, and place in a 9×5 loaf pan, sprayed with nonstick. Cover again and allow it to raise.

Once it starts to peak over the top edge a little bit (see image below), preheat your oven to 375F.

Your bread should be about this high when your oven is finished pre heating…

I'm oven ready!

Now bake for 25 minutes.

Voila! Bread!

Bread!

You can pretty much take it out of the pan right away to cool on a cooling rack. For best sliceability, allow the bread to cool completely, otherwise it smooshes. And no one wants a smooshed down loaf.

If you want to use whole wheat flour, I suggest using white whole wheat, and only about a cup replaced at most. Otherwise it doesn’t raise all that well. Unless you don’t mind a dense loaf of bread.

Oh, and my favourite brand of yeast is Hodgsons Mills yeast. It even make whole wheat loaves rise to tremendous heights.

 

Sound too daunting still? How about a batch of cookies instead? Try out these. They’re easy, delicious, and sure to please.

Cinnamon Roll Cookies

 

Yields 16 cookies

 

Ingredients:

 

Cookies:

 

• 1/2 cup vegan margarine
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 tbs ener-g egg replacer mixed with 1 tbs warm water
• 1 tbs almond (or preferred nondairy) milk
• 1/2 tbs vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tbs cinnamon sugar (2 tbs white sugar plus your preferred amount of cinnamon)

 

Glaze:

 

• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 tbs tofutti better than cream cheese
• 3 tbs nondairy milk (or a little more if necessary)

 

Directions:

 

Cream together the margarine and sugar. When well creamed, mix in the egg replacer mixture, nondairy milk, and vanilla. Beat in your dry ingredients except for the cinnamon sugar, to form a dry dough. On a floured surface, as best you can, form into a rectangle and roll with a rolling pin to about 1/8″ in thickness. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the dough, and roll as you would a cinnamon roll (just pinch together any cracks). Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the freezer until firm.

 

Once firm and sliceable, preheat your oven to 375F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Slice in to 16 cookies, place on the baking sheet and bake for 9 minutes. Allow to cool on the baking sheet.

 

While they cool, make your icing by beating the icing ingredients together. You can just do so with a wooden spoon – no need to break out the beaters. When your cookies have cooled, drizzle or frost the cookies with the icing.

 

It’s going to be so weird. A week from now I will have not much time to bake, and will only be cooking for myself. Talk about an adjustment! Makes my stomach feel a little queezy thinking about it…

 

Apparent endless ambition

Yeppers, that’s what I have. I don’t even think about it when I’m doing things, but I always find that in retrospect I seem to be an overly ambitious person. I admit that I am a total perfectionist, but when I take a look at what I do in a day…it’s kind of insane! For example…who on earth makes everything for dinner from scratch in one day? Like tacos. Tonight we had tacos (recipes follow, loves!). Sounds simple enough, right? Well…not so much considering I made the seitan (vegan pastrami from Vegan Diner), the tortillas, the salsa, the side dish, the dessert, AND did the dishes ALL WHILE taking a test (that I did very well on ) AND exercising. Like I said, insane. Insane like a taco that tastes like a reuben! Indeed, the tacos were reuben tacos! And therefore plain old tortilla shells would not do. Queue the rye tortillas!

Reuben Wrappers (Rye Tortillas)

 

Makes: 8 larger or 12 smaller tortillas

 

Ingredients:

 

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup rye flour
• 1 tsp caraway seeds (I kept mine whole)
• pinch of salt
• 1 tbs vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup boiling water

 

Directions:

 

Mix together your flours, caraway, and salt. Pour in your boiling water and oil and mix to combine with a fork. It won’t come totally together with the fork – so it’s time to start mixing with your hands! Well, kneading. Turn everything, including the uncombined flour, onto a flat surface and start kneading until elastic and smooth (about ten minutes). Add extra all purpose flour if it’s a little too sticky. Form into a ball and let rest for a half an hour, covered with a damp cloth.

 

After you’ve let it rest for the half an hour, preheat a dry (preferably cast iron) skillet to medium heat (lower if it gets too hot).

 

Now take your dough ball, cut into either 8 or 12 evenly sized pieces (depending on how big of tortillas you want). Take a piece of dough, roll it into a ball, flatten slightly in your palm, and then roll out into a thin circle (doesn’t have to be perfect!). Place on your skillet, cook on the first side for about a minute or so (until brown spots start forming), flip, cook for another half a minute to a minute and transfer to a plate. Repeat with the remaining dough balls. Cover with tin foil to keep warm.

As the filling to our tacos, I used Julie Hasson’s recipe for vegan pastrami from Vegan Diner. But if you don’t have that book, you could always use your favourite tempeh bacon, or even your favourite chopped up vegan deli “meat.”

 

Reubacos (Reuben Tacos)

 

Ingredients for one:

 

• 1 rye tortilla (recipe above)

 

• your preferred amounts of: vegan pastrami/tempeh bacon/chopped up commercial vegan deli meat, sauerkraut, rushin’ salsa (recipe follows), and shredded vegan cheese

 

Just pile everything on the tortilla and nosh!

Of course a quintessential component of a reuben sammich is the russian dressing. I didn’t want to have a salad dressing in a taco, so I felt the urge not to just throw together vegan mayo, ketchup, horseradish, and relish in a bowl. Well…what I made is pretty close to that but a little fresher. Oh, and check out the tomato I used! I think it’s a little…happy. If you catch my drift.

Is this tomato a little too happy?

 

 

Rushin’ Salsa

 

Makes 1 cup

 

Ingredients: 

 

• 1 cup diced tomato
• 2 tbs vegan mayo (I used Fat Free Nayo)
• 1 tbs liquid from a can of sauerkraut (or some sort of vinegar? Apple cider vinegar might be nice)
• 1/2 tbs dill pickle relish
• pinch of salt

 

Directions:

 

Mix ‘er up!

Getting tired of reading yet? Deal with it, there’s MORE! (I said the amount I did today was insane, didn’t I?). Well, next up is just some simple roasted veggies. I had some beets to use up in the fridge that mum didn’t want to have with her beet greens a couple of days ago that were dying to be roasted up. So I roasted them. Their destiny has been fulfilled. Don’t you just love eating the rainbow? It’s like the reverse of unicorns, which vomi….never mind. Enjoy!

Colourful Roasted Roots

 

Serves: 2-4

 

Ingredients:

 

• 1 cup chopped beets
• 1 cup chopped and peeled sweet potato
• 1 cup chopped carrot
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1/2 tbs balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 tbs agave nectar
• a pinch of salt

 

Directions:

 

Preheat your oven to 400F. Arrange your chopped vegetables on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Drizzle with the vinegar and agave and toss to coat evenly. Sprinkle with salt and roast for 30 minutes. Give a toss about after 30 minutes and roast for another 10 minutes.

And now we have come to dessert! I was a little too lazy to make “cookie cookies” so bar cookies it was. Well, they’re kind of like a combo of like a chocolate cookie that is topped with a soft blondie batter. Whatever. They’re chewy, they’re low-ish in fat as compared to some bar cookies or brownies, and they taste good. I wasn’t entirely pleased with them when they first came out of the oven, but once they cooled, they turned out to be great treats! Just further proof that patients is a virtue.

Black Bottom Cookie Bars

 

Yields 1 8×8 pan

 

Ingredients:

 

• 1/4 cup (1/2 a stick) vegan margarine
• 1/4 cup applesauce
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp butter extract (optional but good)
• 1 tbs ener-g egg replacer mixed with 2 tbs warm water
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder

 

Directions:

 

Preheat your oven to 350F and spray an 8×8 pan with nonstick cooking spray.

 

In a mixing bowl, cream together the margarine, vanilla, and sugar. Mix in the vanilla, butter extract (if using), and egg replacer mixture. Beat in the flour and salt. Transfer half of the dough to another mixing bowl. To one of the bowls, beat in the cocoa powder. Press your chocolate dough into the bottom of your prepared baking pan. It may be a little difficult to as it is rather sticky. I had to moisten my hands and use my hands to press the dough in. On top of that layer, spread on the vanilla dough. You should be able to just use a spoon or spatula for this – it’s a soft dough. Bake for 30 minutes. Allow to cool before slicing.

 

And now I’m so over cooking for the day. Time to unwind whilst watching Jerseylicious followed by The Great Food Truck Race, sipping a frappe.

One more thing…I CANNOT believe that in a week I will have moved into my apartment. My nerve level just spiked a little.

 

 

 

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em…

Okay, I want in. I’ve caved. I have succombed to making my own “larabar” and am posting about it. Original, right? Well even though it seems to be a hot trend amongst those in the blogging world right now, my real reason behind making these is simple…my local grocery hasn’t been carrying the coconut cream pie larabars and I don’t want to waste money and energy and unnecessary transportation fuel to order them online. So here’s to being cheap! Huzzah!!

Tropical Raw Bar

Makes 3 mini bars, or 6 balls

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup reduced fat shredded coconut
• 7-8 chopped, pitted dates
• 1/8 cup chopped macadamia nuts
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• a drip of coconut extract

Directions:

Process in a food processor or handy chopper your coconut so it is a little finer. Add in your remaining ingredients and process until the mix can stick together. Remove the processor blades, form into your desired shapes, and they’re ready to eat or save!

Variation:

To make “normal” sized bars, simply double the recipe and still only make 3 bars.

What’s your favourite larabar flavour?