Leisure time around the oven

I've been on a mini vacation the last several days and had more time to tinker with foods and recipes, which, now I see, explains why every time I'm off work I gain weight.

That aside, it was a delicious extended weekend! I made goodies galore! Here are some of the highlights:

For breakfast, I made a rice wrap banana "burrito." I cut up a banana diagonally, filled it with my favorite things -- chocolate, coconut, honey -- wrapped it in a rice wrap and sauteed in a pan for a couple of minutes on each side. I covered it with more choco-coco and gobbled it up! Pretty good and gooey.

French (whole wheat) couscous with Cajun hot sauce and sauteed veggies (tomatoes, green peppers, mushrooms, spinach) on top, alongside some muffaletta olive salad, was next on the daily menu.

The couscous is highly recommended!!

And I made an attempt at home-made turtles, but the caramel sauce didn't hold together well. I veganized a recipe that sounded and looked so finger-licking good, but alas!...

Here they are (they were still very much edible!):

I used peanuts

Here's the caramel recipe, if anyone would like to give a try - and if it doesn't separate, please let me know what you did and how many virgins I have to sacrifice to the volcano gods! (just kidding; everyone knows they're only demi-gods):



-2 Tbsp (vegan) butter
-1/2 C packed brown sugar
-1/4 C (vegan) half and half
-pinc of salt
-1 Tbsp vanilla


Mix the first 4 ingredients over medium low heat, 5 to 7 minutes until thicker. Add vanilla and cook another minute. Refrigerate in a jar until cold.

If you make it work as a vegan recipe, I'd be very interested in hearing about it.

Stevia?

Yes, "stevia?" not "stevia." "Question mark" because I wanna know how the world feels about it.  =]

I'm...on the fence. Recently I made pumpkin cheesecake (ok, like 4months ago). And I used stevia. (Not stevia? in this case.)

 

The usual suspects:

*1 pack MoriNu silken tofu

*5-6oz vegan cream cheese

*1 tsp vanilla extract

*1 can (14oz) cooked pumpkin

*dash of stevia

*graham cracker crust (crushed graham crackers, oil of some kind)

Pretty sure that was it. Simple. Looks nice.

 

Tastes...chemically.  =\  Not very sweet. Not normal sweet. At least to me. In teas, I like it, and have no problems with the taste. Maybe stevia is just not meant for (baking and) such rich, luscious desserts as cheesecake. More along the lines of

I tried to improve the taste with some banana butter as a whipped-like topping

 

But it turns out I don't like that much, either.

On a totally unpredictable note, my husband, the anti-vegan, liked it. Go figure!

Home-made Nutella

I think it's clear, even with the handful of post I have, that Nutella and I share a torrid past I repeatedly try to forget and unsuccessfully move on from. An affair in which I drive by its house late at night to see if its car is parked outside; or if I might sneak a peek at another woman's spoon dipped deep into its luscious, chocolaty delight. I dial its cell late at night, many times, and promptly hang up after hearing the inviting "hello."

I yearn for its hazelnutty embrace, its smooth and creamy sweet nothings (literally!), its empty (calorie) promises of a healthy and prosperous relationship -- how bad can milk and its highly processed derivatives be for me, after all?!! I know they are all lies, for Nutella has nothing good to offer me. It will suck the life energy out of me and leave me panting on the floor in a stupor of ecstasy to lazily pick myself up after the sugar high has worn off.

I look for someone new. I look for someone who will offer the same passion and joy without the loss of self-respect. I continue to deceive myself I don't need it and can find fulfillment elsewhere. But, alas! I have searched hi and lo, tried to love over and over again, but none of it is ever the same. And I have no doubt that even after my vegan "I do's" I will still have late nights of running back to its warm yet shameful bed for just one more night of spreadable love.

I know and accept this because nothing will ever compare. And, truth be told, this recipe doesn't compare either, but it temporarily abates the craving.

 

 Here it is, displaying its attributes on Ezekiel sprouted bread

I started with unsweetened 100% chocolate. I melted it and added some hazelnut butter. After mixing that I sweetened it with sorghum syrup. I didn't really measure any of the ingredients and I know how frustrating that can be -- it's annoying reading recipes that use phrases such as "eye-ball it," "'till it's done," or "to taste." And today I'm gonna be guilty of using just about all of them!

So, add sweetener "to taste." Mine was a combination of sorghum syrup and date sugar.

 

 I used this entire chocolate bar, BTW

Then I stirred till my arm hurt and that was just the beginning...

  

Adding hazelnut oil and rice (or any other kind of) milk helped making stirring easier, but it's not like it was fun then, or anything.

...but it sure made it easier to stir cause the mixture was getting creamier. I also added soy milk powder which I think I will either omit next time or use a lot less of (you guessed it, I "eye-balled" the amount this time). I also believe the secret to getting it closer to tasting to the real thing is just the right amount of liquid (milk). I don't know how much that is right now, but I will look into it further with more precision when I make the next batch. Also, next time I'll use the honey/stevia combo instead of sorghum syrup/date sugar.

  

Stir, stir, and then stir some more "till it's done" and when you get there or have just had enough and/or no longer feel your arms, take a slice of bread, spread, and chomp.

I realize you can use a food processor instead of the old-fashioned bowl and wooden spoon combo, but my dishwasher isn't exactly working to the best of its ability and my desire so I went for an easy-to-wash-by-hand dish.

This particular batch needs heating before use since it hardens after sitting in the fridge, so I store it in the cabinet in a washed, old jar I found laying around (two guesses what used to be in it).

 

I would like to add that this recipe, especially if eaten with bread, is not properly combining food, which is a practice I have been trying to strictly adhere to. I plan on posting soon about some of the recent changes in my diet I've adopted. For now, if you're interested in proper food combining, read this post -- it has changed my life (and my constant bloating issues), as has Gena's Choosing Raw blog in general. I would love to hire her as my personal nutrition counselor, so I'm saving up!  =]

Raw Foods

I've been reading a lot of raw food blogs lately, and some of the food loks delicious. So, I've decided to try them out.

Here's THE BEST thing I've eaten in a while -- banana soft serve! Amazing!! And with a little bluberry-mango topping it was finger-licking good. Try this, you might never need regular ice cream again.

As you can see, I couldn't even wait to take a quick picture before I dug into it. It will become a staple in my diet from now on.

For dinner I had a salad with tahini sauce dressing and some spinach pesto with avocado and red peppers. I peeled zucchini to resemble fettucini, added tomatoes and cucumbers, and the results were pretty damn awesome:

I will try and eat raw for the entire week, starting tomorrow, and I've already made a key lime pie that looks delicious but it has a couple of hours in the fridge before I can post the verdict, so look out for that.

Brownies for Breakfast!

 Yes, I had brownies for breakfast almost this entire week! And they were pretty good. I made them with carrot puree and soaked walnuts. Add some Trader Joe's mint chocolate caps and -- ya! Good combo.

 The recipe is pretty simple:

-1/3 cup mint chocolates

-1 cup carrot puree

-1/2 cup date sugar

-1/4 cup applesauce (I use unsweetened)

-1/4 cup cocoa powder

-2 tsp vanilla extract

-2 Tbsp canola oil

-3/4 cup oat flour

-1 tsp baking powder

-2/3 cup chopped walnuts (soaked for at least a couple of hours)

-pinch salt

Preheat the oven to 350F. Melt the mint chocolates and in a large bowl combine with carrot puree, sugar, cocoa, oil, vanilla and applesauce. Mix till it looks creamy. Stir in oat flour, baking powder, walnuts and salt. Pour into a greased 8x8 pan and bake for 35-40min. Cool and cut into squares.

Dig in!

"Tried and Tasted"

One of the major contributors to me going vegan again was the FatFree Vegan Kitchen blog I frequent and cook from. Even as an omnivore, I was able to find delicious recipes that both I, and my picky family, could enjoy. The cook, SusanV, masterfully avoids using added fat in her recipes without losing so much as a morsel of flavor in her dishes

Since I've been cooking Susan's recipes for myself for ages now, I decided to give the Tried and Tasted a go which was started by Zuzana of Zlamushka's Spicy Kitchen and is, as she says, "an opportunity to thank your fellow bloggers for sharing their recipes by re-creating them and writing about your experiences."

The recipe I decided to recreate is the lasagna. I had high hopes for this dish and have been eyeing it for a while now, since it's one of her daughter's favorites. And believe me, E (her daughter) is not often wrong!

I made my own marinera sauce, bought rice lasagna noodles by DeBoles which are great to work with. No pre-boiling, pre-cooking needed -- you just stack and stick (in the oven). I had no spinach in the house, so I used kale. Cooked that with some water and apple cider vinegar in a 2:1 ration of liquids for 10min or so. Yummy! And I don't much care for nutritional yeast, especially in cheeze recipes, I used 1/2 cup cashews. Otherwise, I followed the recipe to a "T." All I have to say is, E was right! Scrumptious!

Here's a few (really lousy) photos:





It was lunch at work for a week!!








Oh, and did I mention I ate it with Namaste brownies and DDD's Sweet Almond Sauce for dessert?