HOMESPUN HAPPINESS

Lunch Set For Sale- Music Lovers

2011-06-22T08:21:00.004-05:00

MUSIC LOVERS LUNCH TOTE

Another item hand created with a goal of helping the next generation learn how to sew. This item is $25 plus shipping. 100% of the monies goes into a fund to help my disadvantaged students pay for sewing supplies or to match the money they have to help them purchase a sewing machine of their own. If you would like to purchase an item email me at harveyd@mepoedu.org. I can send you a payment request through paypal or you may send in a money order. The product will be shipped in a small flat rate box for $5.20 cost in the USA, check www.usps.gov for rates to other places.

Taking your lunch is economical and ecological (green!). This lunch tote is insulated with insul-brite to help keep your cool items cool. It has a zipper closure.

The set comes complete with a matching sandwich wrap, napkin, and water bottle sock that clips to a ring on the bag strap or to your belt loop to use separately.

The sandwich wrap is 16"x16" and has an interior lining made of sport nylon.

Feel free to comment below to ask questions.

This item will also be listed on CreationByDnD www.etsy.com website for $30 plus shipping because etsy takes a % of sales.

Sew practical... sew relaxing!

2008-07-16T09:39:00.009-05:00

A new look... a new blog image?
.

I have been absent from food blogging for some time .... since January. Although I have definitely eaten everyday since then I have found some new ways to channel my creative energy and gain relaxation as well. Life has been full of changes and transitions.... I think everyone everywhere is going through some hard times. For me transitions include my children deciding to grow up no longer allowing me the privilege of being a full-time, professional home body. I entered the "away from home" workforce and sold my commercial oven equipment. Next my sister got married and is now living in my bakehouse, fixing it up for temporary use her family... although we still call it the bakehouse, perhaps the "back" house is more appropriate since it rests at the back of my home. When she is done with it I may fix it up into an office space or a get away cabin. Then sadly my sister in law who is 48 was diagnosed with a fast growing cancer and two weeks later my father in law was diagnosed with a fast growing cancer. Melissa has been experiencing some medical issues that remain undefined ... next appointment August 25 with a specialist who may help uncover the mystery.

Relaxation , therapy, creative expression .... whatever I desire to call it I needed a change and even great vegan cooking felt like work with all the change (Obama is not the only in support of this ... I sometimes feel dragged into it at time kicking and screaming and at times pursuing it). I think I may be changing the name of my blog to encompass the new me, to add the new things that interest me, I'm open for suggestions! (Back home Beauty, All Things Family, ....?)

Since I starting working full-time away from home as Matthew entered college and Melissa entered high school I went through a transition of roles. I was no longer a home school mom and was preparing to enter a whole new stage in life. I haven't been inspired to spend more time on the computer than I needed to and I was challenged to make good food with the new time limitations I has in life, so food exploration and writing together no longer held an appeal for me. I am now a family and consumer science teacher. I teach nutrition and food preparation, family and personal development, textiles and sewing, careers and health / life skills. This opportunity has allowed me to explore textiles and sewing at a whole new level.

Sewing started with a class I took while getting my teaching license and from there I made a brown jumper along with a matching purse. Unfortunately Lucy was left inside unsupervised one day and ate the strap off the purse. I ended up giving the jumper to a brown loving friend. Next came sewing for the basic projects I teach. Then when stresses started effecting the people I loved I expanded the basics into making a pair of pajama bottoms and a matching smiley face overnight bag for Melissa, and an army skirt with matching bag to express the "war" against stress. Then I found a great buy on some olive color fabric and decided I wanted a dress that I could wear to work, Autumn colors work well for me. Then a shirt that was a little sexy just like the one I am wearing above but with short sleeves and made of ribbed t-shirt tan. Next Matthew requested some renaissance style clothing.... this dude is really into some serious time period play, I tell you more later. After that I found my dress to be to plain so I altered a turtleneck to make a crafty fun outfit that I could wear to work .... no longer boring! Above you see a shirt that I completed yesterday. I purchased the jewelery compliments at a farmer's market from a high school girl who does an awesome job. You can buy this awesome-ness on etsy at http://www.jewelerybyjillonline.etsy.com/ .

I will post pictures of my sewing excursions soon.

I devoted a spare room in my home into a sewing / craft room and now spend a great deal of time there. I still have a smaller garden that is beginning to take on aspects of the new roles I play in life.... it is no longer practical and nothing more but it is gaining new colors as I add flowers and gardening decorations. It is still only half dressed so I will save it's modesty. I still cook, but meals are pared down to size since my children are often not eating at home.

Yaki Soba & Wonton "Muffins"

2008-01-06T07:45:00.000-06:00

I got my EAT TO LIVE book by Dr. Furhman in via UPS yesterday. I have finished reading up through Chapter two. He does alot of explaining about fiber, photochemical, and the importance of nutrient dense food. Everything he says agrees with my personal nutritional interests and background. His explanation about slow metabolism's and low calorie diets is interesting and new information to me. His food pyramid would definitely have fruit and veggie's portion to the widest with grains following behind, as I age and see myself getting a little less active (although I still exercise purposefully three - four times a week) this all makes sense to me.

MY VEG HISTORY
I started my healthy foods eating experience with a book sale book titled The Save Your Life High Fiber Diet by Dr. David Reuben (c) 1976. I was interested in this book because I just started experiencing some health problems in my early 20's.... alot of hormonal issues. Shortly after reading this book a trip to the library lead me to Dr. John Mc Dougal's very first book .... one written before he had a bunch of cookbooks and prepared prepackaged foods for sale. Then an Internet search lead me to Bryanna Clark- Grogan's very first cookbook, The Almost No Fat Cookbook which I loved before I even understood the word vegan. I bought a coffee cup at this same time to commemorate my decision, it has the very same picture by Mary Engelbreit that I show below. I've been a vegan foodie ever since then. Then larger changes occurred: giving up my social work career and becoming a home schooling SAHM, selling our home and purchasing an acreage, buying another building an opening up our bakery, then the list goes on and on ...... life has changed so much from that decision. I haven't looked back and have the same mind set again after selling our business while I go to full-time teaching (family consumer science / health). Perhaps while reading this eat to live book I will have another paradigm, but so far nothing is new to me that I have read - I will continue.

Meanwhile..... In the Kitchen

While in to the greens mode, Brussels sprouts are one of my favorites. This is an old, but goody post that I decided to bring up from the April 2006 archives. Enjoy!

YAKI SOBA (buckwheat pasta)
I have made buckwheat noodles before using my hand crank pasta maker, but didn't have time to do this for this meal. I found a yaki soba recipe that I wanted to try and I needed it quick because we would be out for most of the day and be very hungry by the time we arrive home. I was happy to find 100% buckwheat flour noodles at an oriental market last week, $2.79 (not organic) for 10 servings and each serving is bunched with a paper holder so that it is easy to boil up just as much as is needed. Eden has an organic 100% buckwheat soba, but I couldn't get this ordered in time and I think it costs $3.79 for a 12 oz serving. Buckwheat is a grain that my son is not allergic to at all and can eat without problem, but I know his system is sensitive and a problem could develop if we overdo. Plus for non allergy conscious eaters, buckwheat soba is a good way to incorporate variety in the diet (a good thing to do).

I made my seasoned cabbage and carrot/ onion and chik'n chunks ahead of time in the microwave the night before I planned on having this for supper. It turns out that I was the only one eating this supper because everyone else had something going on (of course the leftovers will be served another night - usually the weekend). This is a basic dish easily eaten with chop sticks.

My favorite part of this meal is the wonton "muffins". I baked them in my toaster oven in a mini muffin pan. The filling is unique and made from brussel sprouts (original idea from a Vegan Feast newsletter in which artichoke hearts were used).

BRUSSEL SPROUT FILLING RECIPE

The idea for these "muffins" came from browsing some online recipe archives, not vegan but great food ideas that could be make to my preference. I will be making my wontons in this way in the future, possibly buying another mini muffin pan.

In addition to the wonton wrappers I used this same filling for stuffed mushrooms at my Easter meal. Yumm! The mushrooms were baked at 375 degrees for 15 - 18 minutes. I enjoyed these best 15 minutes or more after coming out of the oven. I am impatient and like to grab things straight out of the oven... Burned mouths are not fun! FOR NON-BAKERS... I think these mushrooms could be cooked in a covered pan and turn out well also. Cook until the mushroom is at an enjoyable quality and the filling warm.

Sugar Withdrawal

2008-01-01T09:35:00.000-06:00

I ordered the book Eat To Live by Dr. Joel Furhman. I have been re-reading posts from last year and decided it is time that I take a serious look at healthy food and living. Of course when it comes to holiday time again (once a month or bi-monthly) I will do something that makes life a treat, but I am really wanting to make a change and lose a little flour. Geish! I can't believe I said that, I was a whole grain organic baker for a living for 5 years before going into teaching (health and life skills/ occupational family and consumer science) and a cooking mom before that.... freshly milled whole grain flour IS HEALTHY right! Yes, I cannot deny, but I think I need a little break from wheat and easy going more with the whole grain. Now I will not give up all that I enjoy, just not make it daily or even every week habits.

I don't have my book in yet, Thursday is the big day according to amazon. I will also get my circular knitting needle on this day so I can knit two socks at the same time. I am looking forward to this, but I know it will be a slow process!

Here's a food report:

I have been taking meal ideas from both Bryanna Clark-Grogan and Dreena Burton cookbooks for meals. I know there are some new cookbooks out, but I just need to stick in my personal comfort zone for awhile.

BRYANNA's Sharp Chedda' Cheez

Bryanna has some nice cheez recipes in the previous Vegan Feast newsletters. I was impressed with their goodness when the original recipes calling for Emes vegan gelatin came out, then we went through the fall of the company and the wonderful cheez recipe needed a new ingredient that would give it the perfect texture. IRISH MOSS powder was one suggestion and it is what I have available, as stinky as it is. I had to order a pound of the green powder and was asked by other coop members how I intended to use it. When I told them it was for vegan cheez making, I think they thought I was losing my mind and when I first made the cheez using it I wondered whether it was a mistake also. As you can see in the picture below it is green inside the glass measure..... it also smells pretty fishy. But once all is added and cooked the way the recipe says, the green goes away and it doesn't smell or taste the way the Irish moss powder does.

Here is the cheez topping the Mexican Lasagna in Dreena Burton's latest book Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan. You can see the chedda and the frozen block of cheez in the background. It even browns beautifully, however Dreena's recipe says to cover for the main baking process and then uncover for the last few minutes, I left the casseroles uncovered the entire baking time. Here's "close-up", it appears to me that the peice I ate is a little blurry. It was delish though and I, for the first time in my entire life, ate avocado.
Next up is the enchilada casserole that I tried from Dreena's Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan Cookbook. I had it for supper and then again for lunch and the last of it will be for lunch today. I like it and again a new avacado experience. The bad thing about avacado is the $1.84 price for one.

Lasy quick picture is of a lunch salad and homemade croutons using the innards of the red pepper sage bread that I made for the muffaletta awhile back. Hope your lunches are healthy and nutritious.

Merry Christmas and Soup Mix

2007-12-23T20:41:00.000-06:00

VEGAN BISCOTTI (plain anise flavored) with awesome dark chocolate brushed on top and sprinkled with ground up english walnuts. My base recipe came from Bryanna Clark Grogan's Nonna's Italian Kitchen Cookbook, Only I made mine a plain anise flavored variation.
Here's a free recipe that I found though:
Fat Free Vegan's Cinnamon Biscotti Recipe

Now that I have your attention with my tantilizing favorite holiday treat -

Merry Christmas!

I've been trying to post for a couple of days, but I guess NOW is my lucky moment to accomplish the task. After the ice storms came a wonderful Christmas day with highs in the 50's, and sunshine. It was awesome. We had a great Christmas day brunch before opening presents, which we already knew all that there was because we shop together and get what we want .... we just don't get it until after the Bible reading by DH followed by the brunch. Without further ado, I'm going right to the food pictures. Here is my first round Christmas day. The pizza is BREAKFAST PIZZA by Bryanna Clark Grogan Oct/Nov/Dec Vegan Feast Newsletter. Every holiday season since I started subscribing we have had a new awesome main course brunch dish to feast upon. I have been subscribing since the beginning and will not stop. The ideas and personal connection is worth every penny. Bryanna is a kitchen goddess, NO... wait! I take that back, because of Bryanna I AM A kitchen goddess! :) I served the pizza with a sliced pear and a soymilk (made in my soyajoy) cappuchino.

Next trip to the kitchen allowed me to get some of this TENDER BANANA BREAD from Bryanna Clark Grogan's cookbook, FIBER FOR LIFE. I love this because the fat is replaced with a silken tofu mixture which is also great protein and it is made 100% whole wheat pastry flour, yet is still wonderfully tender. The cookbook offers the option to use dates in this, but I use vegan chocolate chips which my family adores, I like that if I am going to add a little fat it comes from chocolate. Mmmm-my kinda fat.
More cheers for Bryanna and the VEGAN FEAST Newsletter again. Here is a picture of her seitan "salami/ pepperoni", I did the pepperoni version. My meat eating sister ate 10 slices of this with crackers and said, I love this stuff! I wasn't a big fan of the seitan o'greatness awhile back due to the fact it was so dry, but this salami / pepperoni is not. The crackers you see on this plate are actually pretzel flats with an everything seasoning, new find at the grocery store and they are not to bad. Back to the seitan, every issue of the newsletter usually has one new way with seitan that I get the pleasure of trying.
I need to back track just a bit. Here is my counter setup for the breakfast pizza. The crust dough, vegan "sausage" crumbles (Bryanna's kielbasa seitan recipe from my freezer that I crumbled up), the tofu frittata mix in the food processor, red peppers, shredded sweet potato, and shreds of Bryanna's sharp chedda' cheez. The crust is interesting, it is like a thick batter that can sit in the frig for up to two weeks until you are ready to use it. The recipe calls for enough to make two pizza crusts. I am going to try a mushroom onion style pizza with the other half, I found a recipe for this that I really want to veganize in a weight watchers magazine.
Okay, I am sure that you are probably thinking Bryanna again? .... yes, I say again. There are so many recipes I still have to try from all of her cookbooks and other vegan feast newsletters that I could sing her praises for a long time. This is my version of CHRISTMAS STOLLEN, the dough has no fat but is not dry. I used the sweet bread dough from her Al-most No Fat Holiday Cookbook. To make it stollen I added cardamom, coriander, orange peel, pecans, english walnuts, rum soaked raisins, cranberries, chopped dates and dried prunes. More backtracking. Here is the seitan salami after it finished cooking in my clay pot, it is wrapped with cheesecloth. It cookes in a small amount of very flavorful broth, which does not get completely soaked up as you can see a small amount is left over.

Last idea to share. I like to make a batch of a recipe I found many years ago called Be Prepared Soup Mix, I call it Five Bean Soup Mix. When I want to make some I take 1 1/2 cups of the beans, 1/4 cup of the seasoning mix and a can of diced tomates. Sometimes I make it in the crockpot, somtimes on the stove top, but all the time when I make it do I enjoy it.

BEAN MIX:

1 1/2 cup pinto beans

1 1/2 cup white benas

1 cup kidney beans

1 cup baby lima beans

1 cup chickpeas

SPICE MIX:

1/2 cup dried minced onion

1 Tbsp paprika

2 tsp salt

1 tsp mustard powder

1/2 tsp garnulated garlic

1 Tbsp Frontier chicken flavor bouillon powder
3 Tbsp Frontier beef flavor bouillon powder

1 Tbsp parsley

1/4 cup vegan bac'un bits

1/4 cup dried Frontier mixed vegetable soup flakes

DIRECTIONS:

Combine the beans and place in a large jar with enough room to add the baggie of spice mix.

1 "batch" = 6 generous servings of soup

To make a batch soak 1 1/2 cup of beans overnight, drain and place them in a 3 quart saucepan (or crockpot). Add 5 cups of water and 1/4 cup seasoning mix, you can add the tomatoes now or at the end of simmering time. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cover. Simmer 2 - 2 1/2 hours until beans are tender or crockpot cook them on low all day.

NUTRITIONAL INFO:

Per serving: 187 calories, 12 g protein, >1 gram fat, 465 mg sod, 33 g complex carbs, and 9 grams fiber.

Individual batches can also be prepared separately, add a nice label with instructions, and give as a gift.

Ice Ice Baby

2007-12-19T19:08:00.000-06:00

The ice storm on the first of December was followed by another storm system that left a mess of broken tree branches in our yard. Here is the view walking out of our back door onto the porch, the tree still had some leaves left on it. This branch also fell on the roof of my car, but fortunately no damage was done.

In February this year we had a similar storm that caused power outages across our state, to the point our county and many surrounding us were considered at the level of federal help. We were with no electricity for almost two weeks. This time 6 hours (We were worried!), but relieved when the electricity came back on.

In the mean time I got pictures of the stocking DD and I made. Her's is a black velvet with some fancy painting decoration on it and is in the shape of a feminine high heel. We got the idea from a book about Christmas by Martha Stewart. I wanted mine to look more like a teacher's stocking as this has been a big event in my life this year. The guys stockings ended up being purchased ... yes they "cheated", but they did work on them for a few hours with us and we still have the material cut and ready to turn into a stocking someday. Matthew wanted a more complex design though, something with a symbol of a bear or resembling the renassance time period. I was lost as to how to preceed with this without a pattern and instructions.

BREAKING CRAFT NEWS!

Knitting is a popular past time recently revived in popularity, so I learned to knit recently. After mastering the lessons in the teach yourself how to knit book my sis gave me a while back I was mesmerized by the idea of a warm pair of socks to make for my feet, but didn't want to spend any money on a pattern that I did not know if I had the skills for. I surfed the net and found a free sock pattern to try and I created one knit sock (pictured above) and yes, it has a few mistakes, but I think I am hooked ... no "needled". I know that if I try to make another sock like my first it would not turn out the same becasue I would want to correct my mistakes so I decided to turn that one into a stocking for a special "my first sock" memory. After running around the house with one sock on showing all I could find who were thrilled with me (one dog and a cat that decided I could talk all I want as long as she was petted) I knew what I wanted for Christmas... tools to pursue my sock hobby. Come Dancer, come prancer, come donner come .... Amazon.com. I found what will be my Christams present, but I'll get it after Christmas. The book is KNIT TWO SOCKS AT THE SAME TIME by Melissa Morgan Oakes. I like knitting because it relaxes me, but it is hard for me to set it down before a project is finished.

ON THE FOOD FRONT

Busy at work still, but not as much as it has been over the past few months as I am adjusted to my new schedule and organized my class room in a way that works for me. A few things that have been cooking at my house include recipes from Dreena Burtons new cookbook called Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan.

Dreena's Palak Soyabina Panira p. 137. I really liked this dish, but since I am the only greens fan here I am the only one who ate this dish, but this was fine because I really did like this!
Blackened tofu (p. 121) served with baked squash and a romaine salad with pomegranate seeds. This tofu has a spicy bite to it, but I liked it well enough. I had never tried blackened anything before trying this dish, so it was a new experience for me.

Dreena's white chocolate chip with macadamia nut cookies p. 202. DH's favorite! I made the five spice almond cookies also which were my favorite and DH ranked them his second favorite.
Then a few Bryanna Grogan recipes...

Rosemary red potatoes from her Italian Nonna cookbook (yummmmmm).

Neetballs that are baked dry and ready to add to a savory sauce. The powdery substance on the outside is whole wheat flour and these actually stay together when put in a sauce to cook. They swell up while taking liquid from the cooking sauce making them a treat that iI have served at previous holiday functions. I am planning on using them to make a saucy crockpot style neetballs sometime during the holiday. They take some hands on prep time, but they can be made ahead and frozen to have handy for the day I am ready to cook.

I have also been enjoying hot soymilk cappuchinos using my soyajoy soymilk maker. I like these with a little carob powder, stevia, vanilla, and instant decaf coffee granules. CHEERS and I hope everyone is staying warm, we are trying to.

Mmmmmmuffaletta

2007-12-02T16:17:00.000-06:00

Dreena's ED&BV One Wild Chick stew was good. It reminded me of a chicken and rice type soup, but the wild rice made it more...... wild. DH usually does not like chickpeas except in falafels, so he complained about my choice of soup. As usual I said, "I know it's far from your favorite but please at least try it." He did and then said it is alright. I used homemade chickpeas in this soup which cooked up softer than the canned ones, I think it is actually the firmness canned chickpeas he does not like. I really think that it is the way I first introduced chickpeas to him when I first decided I was going vegan many years ago, I made a dish that wasn't wonderful and decided that they were going to like it so I did not cook anything else until it was gone. Ummm... do not try this at home.

Stockings are coming along, mine and DD's are finished and hanging, the guys are a bit slower. I'll probably have to help them finish up, but then they are only attempting this to please me, doing things together is what I always ask for when it comes to gift choices. I'll show you the finished stockings in another post.

Next food item I have been wanting to try was Dreena's ED&BV Veggie Tempah Muffaletta. I have had this page post-it-note tagged since first seeing the recipe, but thought it would be time consuming with what seemed like a long list of ingredients. Since I was wintered in for a weekend I bought a can of artichoke hearts and went to the kitchen. I had some tempah in the freezer since the beginning of last summer and have not been inspired enough to use it until now. I humbly admit that this was my first time with tempeh, but woo-hoo - my family LOVED it in this recipe.

I made two loaves of red pepper sage bread for the round loaf of bread called for in the recipe. Several years ago I was looking at bakery web pages and noticed one had a bread with this flavoring. I took one of my own recipes and did what I thought was good ...... it is..

RED PEPPER SAGE BREAD

1 3/4 cup water

2 tsp olive oil

1/4 cup dried red bell pepper flakes

1 1/2 tsp dried ground sage

2 Tbsp raw sesame seeds

2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp instant yeast

1 C corn flour

1 C whole white wheat flour

1 1/2 C unbleached all-purpose bread flour

(opt) 1 - 2 Tbsp vital wheat gluten

Combine all in bread maker or kitchen appliance to make the dough and allow to rise. Punch down and shape loaves in a prepared baking surface, let rise again 20 minutes. Place in cold oven and turn oven on to 375 degrees. Bake 35 minutes, includes electric oven warming up time, may need more time if you have an oven that heats up slower than mine (approx 6 minutes).

I also like to add pumpkin seeds/ pepitas to this when I need a hearty bread to go with a soup supper.

One Wild Chick

2007-12-01T14:08:00.000-06:00

I have been trying the soup recipes out of Dreena Burton's latest book Eat Drink and Be Vegan. Today's pot is as my blog entry title suggests. It takes one wild chick to live where i live. Today's weather in the central Midwest USA is COLD! We are getting a mix of freezing rain, sleet, and snow making travel impossible. I love these days when I have no where else to go and the family is all safe at home. I shared in my last post that I have challenged my family to make their own stockings this year to hang underneath the mirror by the Christmas tree. Here we are sitting at the table with our scissors, material, and the sewing machine.... okay a bit of soda pop also.

We are each working hard. Dave took the pictures, but he is trying to make the biggest stocking of all so we can stuff it well with our generosity, however he was hoping I would have enough material to stick a new garage inside of it. ... not likely this year.

The joy is IN the journey. I often like the planning of the event better than the event itself.

Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T06:42:00.000-06:00

I WELCOME THE HOLIDAY SEASON!

I am thankful for the four very large butternut squash that a friend grew in her garden... she had so many that she gave me four. In order to see a size comparison I have the gift next to a squash I bought, a pear, and my 3 quart crock pot.

Yesterday (Wednesday) the kitchen and I had some good bonding time since I had the day off of work. The day started as a "slow" day, the kind in which I prepare oatmeal with pumpkin, carob chips and a pot of hazelnut flavored coffee. I take an hour to sit and eat while everyone else sleeps or goes to work while I reflect on life. During my reflection time I grabbed my journal to write a few things down, but I grabbed the wrong journal. I have kept a family memory book of holidays beginning in 2004 in which I start the holiday season writing a "state of the union address" then each member of our family start this season writing five things they are thankful for. I included a record of all the happenings from Thanksgiving to New Years including lists of the gifts we received, my favorite recipes with our reactions to new ones tried, and ways we want to change to make things more meaningful next year. Sentimental feelings ran high as I looked through this book and this is where I began to journal.

Part of my feelings were sadness that I almost forgot this treasure in my "busy-ness" of life. My reflection time took me back to where I was last year at this time, hoping for a teaching position after finishing my license and debating whether to close the doors on my business or stay on part-time. At the same time I was adjusting from being a full-time home school mom into a full-time away from home employee so that DH and I could build up our retirement fund and get the kids through college. My son is now in college full-time and my daughter enrolled full-time into public high school full-time which she wanted and we reluctantly agreed. I have to admit I appreciate hearing her talk about what she liked while being a home schooled student now that she faces a different type of education. DH is very happy with the position he was promoted to at his day job and enjoys his time being the sound engineer for a christian rock band and I have enjoyed traveling around with them. Although this year has been a time of grieving the end of where we have been and who we used to be, it has also been exciting as we transition into where we are now. Exciting, but not without several growing pains which we are dealing with ... "What does not kill me will make me a better person."

A summary of 2007 with one word TRANSITION.

We also put up our little tree the day Friday (today ... as I finish the blog entry I started on Wednesday). I snapped a picture of my favorite kiddos and one of our dog's, Ricky. DD is in charge of holiday decorations and it looks like we are going to have a blue and silver theme this year. Soon I will replace the picture on the wall with a window like mirror under which out hanger for 4 stockings will be hung. I think the challenge I will give the family this year is to create their very own stocking to hang there this year, something that will creatively express who they are this year and what is important to them.

I am also thankful for the opportunity to be able to reflect on our transition, that says we made it through. At one time in our life DH and I stepped away from our "normal" life (trusted in God, sold the house, home schooled the kids, grew a large garden, started a "hippie" business, etc) and followed our hearts. Before we started that journey we both agreed that even if we failed, failure would be better than wondering if or living in regret of never trying. We did not fail, we have been blessed. I hope that your holidays are the same, hope filled and if difficult that they be internally satisfied in the midst of it.

NOW I INVITE YOU INTO MY KITCHEN ...

How about a sip of brew inspired by Dreena's ED&BV (p. 227) MULLED CRAN-APPLE CIDER. It snowed in my state on Thanksgiving Eve so I filled Crock pot #1 with this wonderful potion to sip on this chilly evening and then let it stay on warm until we finished it for breakfast. I had to use what I had on hand and ended up making enough changes that I will share my recipe with you.

DORI's MULLED CHERRY-APPLE CIDER

Place the following in the crock pot and allow to cook on high for 2-3 hours, then switch to warm.

1 - 12 oz container frozen cherry-apple juice concentrate (thawed)

3 - 12 oz "cans" of water (juice prepared as directed on the can)

In a tea bulb I placed 5 -1" cinnamon sticks, 10 allspice seeds, and 4 whole cardamom pods. I placed this in my juice and added 1/4 tsp nutmeg, a sprinkle of KAL brand stevia extract, and 1/2 tsp orange peel powder. A sliced up an orange in thin slices and placed about 6 slices, cut into quarters in my crock pot with the juice and spices. Dreena said with her recipe that you could add a few splashes of rum or brandy if desired.... sure I would desire to, but I have none on hand. I still have an unopened bottle of Cranberry Crimson wine from Christmas 2006 sitting on my shelf, I received 2 as a gift and emptied one with the help of 6 friends. I plan on taking it to a dinner we will be going to at my aunts house.

For breakfast we enjoyed the hot fruit drink served with muffins loaded with carrots and apples from Ken Haedrich's cookbook called COUNTRY BAKING. Although this book is not vegan, recipes can easily be transformed. I know Dreena has a good carrot and fruit filled muffin in her EDV cookbook or maybe it is in VLV cookbook, I've made them. The ones I made now are a bit more decadent and carrot cake like.

DREENA'S ED&BV Sweet Potato Lentil Chili: I made this in the crock pot on Monday night and enjoyed bowls of this for snacks and several meals after. I find Dreena's use of lemon and lime juice in soups unique to what I have cooked before. This was a change that my salty pallet had to adjust to, but now I really find it refreshing. I also found some 2 cup freezer containers made by ball. Although I enjoy homemade canned soups off my shelf, I like the convenience of freezing away one or two left over servings to use as I need. When I know I want to eat one ahead of time I place it in the refrigerator to thaw, ready to heat and eat.

The Everyday Slow cooker byRobin Robinson ... PUMPKIN BUTTER. I made this last year in and noted in my cookbook that I loved it, this year in order to avoid redundancy I noted that I REALLY loved it. I placed this wonderful stuff in 1/2 pint jars and hot water bathed it in my large slow cooker. 7 jars were covered with water, cooked on high 5 -6 hours, and removed to rest on a towel for 12 hours. The jars sealed "pop" immediately after taking them out of the crock pot. This was convenient I said to myself. I wish that I could have canned pint jars this way, but they won't fit I would have to take my other canner out to accomplish this task. Note that I peeled and cut the squash in to take out the seeds, I added the large pieces to my crock pot with the spices and a little onion. When all was done I blended combination smooth with my hand blender. I made mine sugar free and liked it very well. My recipe follows:

GRRRR'''' I entered this recipe once already, but then my computer froze as I tried to e-mail a video at the same time I was working on this. Anyways, here goes round two.

DORI'S STEVIA PUMPKIN BUTTER
Note: I doubled the recipe and canned 7 jars 1/2 pint jars to give as gifts for the holidays.
2 pounds of butternut squash
2 cups of apple juice
1 tsp KAL pure stevia extract powder

1 Tbsp blackstrap molasses
1 Tbsp good quality cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp allspice
Combine all in the crockpot and cook on high 4 hours (or so), low for longer.
Blend with a handblender. Place in jars and process can if desired. I did can the 7 half pint jars in my 5 quart crockpot. I did this by preparing the jars and lids, placing the jars in the crockpot, fill with water. Cook on high 6 hours. I heard the jars seals within 1 minute of taking them out of the crockpot. This would be similar to the hot water bath method. The water was boiling in the crockpot when I took the jars out. The apple juice might cause this recipe to have an acceptable acid percentage for water bath canning however I would recommend perssure canning per the canning instruction book for pumpkin pie mix.

On Thanksgiving day two new recipes I tried were Marie Oser's "The Enlightened Kitchen" cauliflower in "cheese" sauce on page 163. This was a bit heavy on the nutritional yeast and needed a little shake of salt, but I really liked this dish. I added green peas after I snapped the picture which really made a difference in appearance. Overall Ilike this dish and will probably make it again.

DH and the kids really loved a cheesy corn and macaroni casserole that I used to take to potlucks years ago. This year they bugged me figure out how to make it so we can have it again. Here is the vegan result:

DORI'S CHEEZY MAC AND CORN CASSEROLE

In the crockpot combine the following (we doubled the recipe listed):
1 - 14.5 oz can of whole kernel corn with it's juice
1 - 14.5 oz can cream style corn
1 cup uncooked elbow macaroni
1 cup cheddar style cheese (a good melty kind)
**I used some homemade chedda' created by Bryanna Clark grogan.
1 Tbsp earth balance margarine
Cook on high about 3 hours, until the macaroni is cooked and the extra juices are soaked up. Serve. On Thanksgiving day our crockpot was the first dish emptied.

Robin Robinson's "The Vegetarian Slow Cooker" green beans Provencal also made an appearance on my Thanksgiving table. I was a bit heavy on the pepper accidentally, but I still liked this recipe consisting simply of petite diced tomatoes green beans, onions salt and pepper. If you want a creamy mushroom sauce type bean she has a recipe for this in her book also. I am planning on trying it when I get some fresh mushrooms.

To conclude I will have to admit the autumn (harvest time) is my favorite time of year, but this season definitely comes in a close second.

Pumpkiny stuff...

2007-11-09T05:56:00.001-06:00

Isa's VWAV pumpkin seed crusted tofu along with roasted strips of tofu and a romaine salad with chopped apples and dried cranberries. I liked the raosted pumpkin, I have not tried it this way before. The pumpkin seed coated tofu has a nice crisp texture, but needs more flavor ... perhaps a sauce would cure this.

What's cooking at Dori's ....

2007-10-28T18:09:00.000-05:00

I have been a little time constrained as I adjust to the full time (and then some) schedule, however it is important to me to stay motivated to cook nutritious and vegan. Now that I am out in the "real" world again and away from the protective constrains of my home, professional kitchen, and organic acreage I am finding the need to stay connected to my roots and passions. It is harder to do this in a time crunch, but I am determined to stay with my values and preferred eating habits. To do this I have found that my Internet community of inspired vegan cooks is what works the best with my schedule and my rural location, also reading the blogs of other cooks inspires me to be a better cook and person despite being "only one". I decided this week as I make my comeback cooking post you are going to get a run down on what this busy, vegan has cooked.

ALSO I want to let you know that I purchased Dreena's new book, EAT DRINK AND BE VEGAN via amazon and am enjoying BRYANNA"S VEGAN FEAST fall issue just in time for the upcoming holiday season. I am in the states so Canadian friends, my Thanksgiving pictures will soon be coming.

Oh and the pictures....

I live in a household with a teenage daughter who has determined that the family digital camera should be shared. It seems that every time I want to take a picture of a gorgeous vegan meal that the batteries are dying, dead, or just got on the charger. Further justification in my complaint is that her my space and face book pictures have great quality and quantity. Perhaps she needs a camera for the next gift (or maybe I do!). Yes here is the lovely sweet daughter on her big day. I made this cake btw ... I used a Bryanna Clark Brogan recipe which features chocolate and coffee.

BACK TO DAILY FOOD:

I live in the Midwest and our farmer's market season is closed now until May. I can purchase veggies that have been shipped in from other places at the grocery store (at high prices for food that is not as high of quality as I prefer). My garden was small this year because I knew that I was going to apply for the position that I currently work (and I do love it .... despite time consuming for now), so my food creations will be limited to season and availability since my canning shelves did not get as well stocked with soups and wonderfuls that I would have typically done this time of year.

Announcing meals I have prepared this week ....

Bell Peppers stuffed with Israeli Couscous and Lentils (p. 152) Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robinson

I was given a gift of about 10 beautiful red and green peppers from a gal that goes to our church. This recipe is uniquely different from the typical southwestern flavorings of her Salsa Rice and Beans stuffed pepper recipe, although I made those 11-2006 and liked them very much. I do write in my cookbooks when I try a recipe and date it, it's fun seeing this when I flip through. I also make notes about what I might do the recipe next time. Since it was primarily Dave and I eating these I had them for supper, lunch and supper again one evening when the rest of the family was out doing whatever they needed to do.

I really like the convenience of Boca burgers (original) and whole grain buns along with a fresh romaine salad. I do this for lunch or supper at least once a week.

With more peppers I made Dreena Burton's red pepper pasta sauce and served this with some whole grain spaghetti and cauliflower that I had in my freezer, homegrown in my garden. Of course a meal like this cannot be served without some of her famous chocolate chip cookies from Viva Le Vegan ... an irresistible necessity. Another Dreena favorite made this week was Ginger Hoison Rice Noodles from The Everyday Vegan, this recipe is prepared several times during pepper season.

This is my week's report. Now I am going to be scouting around on other blogs for other good inspiration and I'll share what I found and cooked next week. Until then, happy cooking (and eating)! HUGS to you all!

Summer Vacation

2007-06-29T16:24:00.000-05:00

Hey! Just a quick post to say I am spending a lot of time around the pool and reading books. I have been harvesting garden produce and buying flowers from the farmer's market. I have not been blogging. Life is good here, but I need to take a break from being inside and the computer. Until I blog again .... I heart you all and have a wonderful summer!
<3

Bonding

2007-06-03T13:44:00.000-05:00

Two boys bonding after surgery. One with a broken finger and had to have it operated on to screw the bones back together. The other went in the day after to get neutered. They make a lovely pair don't you think. The bandages on the hand are now a florescent orange cast.

FOOD:

I was at the store looking for canned vegetarian baked beans, but couldn't find any so I decided to make a double batch of Dreena's black strap molasses baked beans in the crock pot and decided to can several jars of it in my pressure cooker. I got 7 pint jars plus enough to eat for a meal, 2 jars did not seal correctly so I stuck them in the freezer to use first when I am ready for some more beans. While I was at it I canned my own chickpeas. I soak them overnight, change the water, bring them to a boil, and fill the jars 2/3 full before adding water and salt. Lid them and process for 1/ 1/2 hour at 10 lbs pressure. The clear jars allow me to see that the chickpea water turns to gel when it cools.

FAMILY LIFE ...

DH is the sound man for a Christian band called Piercing The Darkness. This past Friday evening they played for an event called JUNE JAM at an amphitheatre .... an out door concert in the middle of the forest. I thought it would be an awesome place for a music video with the lush greenery around.

City Wide Garage Sales were also this weekend in our town. I picked up this unique, brand new microwave cooking dish made by Tupperware. All of it's attachments (sold separately) and a cookbook were included. Supposedly one can cook a three course meal (including pasta in the water) all at the same time. After looking at the cookbook a bit I'm pretty impressed with the possibilities. I hope to show something impressive after spending a whopping $10 on this gadget ... the receipt was in the bag and the whole set cost $70 ... this was in it's original wrapping unopened. The entertainment value of trying this out will surely will be worth my money, hopefully I even be able to tell you it was a real steal!

GARDEN ...

I have been harvesting spinach and edible pod peas, Sugar Anne type, they have a plump pod . I like these better than other types of edible pod peas (aka snow peas).

To use these up I made a wrap using some thin sliced seitan, herbed tofutti soy cream cheese and thin slices tomato (purchased from the market not local) along side of the baked beans and peas. The peas were raw and fresh picked form the garden, I love the way they taste without dressing. I also made a schzeuan veggie stir fry. I didn't want to wait the 45 minutes to make brown rice so I served this over a microwaved red potato. My stir fry consists of carrots, mushrooms, purple cabbage, onion, garlic, and a homemade schzeuan sauce. I finished this meal with a fruit smoothie and was very satisfied.

I have been drinking a lot of iced herbal fruity teas from celestial seasoning. My favorite is the peach, but black cherry and raspberry are good too.

In the mood to bake again, I also made some whole grain (white wheat) bread dough with wheat Bulgar and sunflower seeds added. The last bit of dough was formed into cinnamon rolls starring chocolate chips. This time I chose to bake the rolls in muffin cups, they turned out well .... err, so I heard I actually didn't get one of these.

LAST MY FAVORITE ....

My herb garden. This is how it looks a week ago, but I have several seeds planted that are just beginning to break through the ground right now. I have dill, thyme, Italian basil, chives, rosemary, radish, sunflowers (these will get big so I will only allow 2 but mainly for looks), English breakfast radish, and an early girl tomato plant because I had one left over and didn't want to waste it.

I love this time of year. I hope everyone is enjoying it. We have not yet hit high temperatures. It has been getting into the 70's by day and down to the 50's at night.

Camping, Pets, and Food (oh my)

2007-06-01T20:06:00.000-05:00

We are back from our three day camping vacation. We "rough it" in the wilderness with nothing but our tents, air mattresses, propane cook stove, port-a-potty, battery operated DVD player, modern shower houses, firewood and mother nature. I did leave the laptop computer at home :). We drove approximately 2 hours to get to RATHBUN LAKE on Friday night and spent the evening setting up, starting the fire, and having a snack before watching Pirates of the Caribbean 2 DVD.

Saturday morning we woke up and it was raining ... most of the morning and again in the middle of the afternoon. We were not "water proofed" in our cozy eating area yet (we realized) and were in no mood to cook or eat breakfast outside so we took a 15 mile trip into town. I brought along a box of KASHI organic promise Autumn Wheat cereal and small asceptic (refrigeration not needed) box of soy milk with a pkg of raisins and ate inside with others at a not vegan friendly restaurant - the coffee was good. :) I did not expect to find much to eat in this area other than the local Hy-Store (a mid west chain grocery store) where I could get the soy milk, some smart dogs, etc in the organic refrigerated vegetable section. While there we decided to shop a couple of stores for "stuff" and purchased a Dora the Explorer cloth key holder type necklace to hold my room keys, a mini twist out pen to sign passes, and some lemon pepper. We were having a good time with the kids so we splurged on toys and a couple of stuffed monkeys that screeched like two girls in a tent having a grand time thinking about all sorts of scary things.

For lunch the rain had stopped long enough for DH and I to extend our canopy covering with a tarp over the picnic table so that we could have a dry place to sit if the rain continued. I ate guiltless gourmet corn chips with salsa, a vegan genisoy protein bar, and washed it down with some cold herbal "sun" tea before heading into another town the opposite direction 25 miles away. My son's girlfriend camped with us this weekend and on Saturday we had to make arrangements for my daughter to see her favorite beau for a few hours. While Melissa was off with her guy friend I went with my son and his girl friend to an antique store, watched Shrek 3 in this town's one screen Victorian style opera house, and checked out various restaurants looking for some vegan friendly options for supper. We found one that served pasta with a vegan garden veg mushroom pasta sauce, vegan Parmesan style cheese (on hand due to a request by other customers), a nice very veggie green salad with Newman's own balsamic vinaigrette, and a piece of strawberry rhubarb pie (crust made with Crisco which is vegan). I was pleased that they were familiar with my request (I'm not the only one in the rural part of a rural Midwestern state who eats "funny") and when I started asking questions the waitress knew what I was after and could tell me options.

When I asked for the ingredients to the pasta sauce, she replied with ,"Will the recipe work?" Awesome I said. I write it here for blog land to see also, I really enjoyed this meal! The recipe was a print off from cook.com recipe search. I left an excellent tip and they have no "trade secrets" going on here, just a simple desire to please a customer (SCORE!).

MEATLESS SPAGHETTI SAUCE
4 Tbsp olive oil
2 cups chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 cup chopped green pepper
1/2 cup shredded carrots
28 oz can diced tomatoes, juice and all
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 jar garden veg style Ragu
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
Fry first 5 ingredients until golden. Add remaining ingredients and simmer an hour, serve over spaghetti. Add a second jar of Ragu to leftover sauce to make another meal.

At supper, I had a strange sensation that my kids were growing up when my daughters friend paid her bill, my son paid his and his girl friends bill and I paid my own ... wow I thought to myself is this what it feels like to watch my babes grow up?! Last night I was checking out their my space pages and I see my sons new name is "I love K***" and her new name became "I Love My Matt!" I also see my daughters young man friend is seeking out what he wants to be when he grows up so he can earn enough money to provide for a place to live one day for his future wife (hopefully my daughters name). After a moment of breathless silence, I realized I liked the thought of more in my family. I do like these extra kids around me ... my babes are growing into fine people. Part of me wants to resist and cling to the old and familiar and part of me yearns to see what's next.

Sunday was all that we hoped for! Sunshine, sights, boats, camping food, water. The swimming areas were closed due to high water, but the kids found a way to play anyways, although in the water they were obedient and did not swim (I didn't ask then to define the word swim though). My absolute favorite new food from this weekend. Dave sliced some red potatoes into 1/3 inch round slices, dipped them in olive oil, sprinkled with lemon pepper, and grilled them until cooked and had beautiful grill lines. I ate these with grilled cabbage (made in foil) mixed with some natures seasoning, a little ketchup, and a couple of ice cubes with a sliced up vegan Yves Italian sausage link as well as a little vegetarian baked beans. I also enjoyed that I had some DREENA COOKIES to snack on throughout the weekend along with gala apples.

Monday we packed up in a light rain and had to set up at home again for everything to dry out. Although DH said that it is less work without the kids, I agree, we had a great time together and it was worth the work. Matt is home for the summer now, sis's school is out and today was my last day also - meowza summer is really here now. DD and I were able to stop at the farmer's market today and my favorite vendor had wonderful flowers just as I hoped. She picked this bouquet which has a beautiful fox glove in it.

MORE NEWS ...
While we were camping I must have been feeling those mothering hormones rise again because we saw a dog that looked a lot like our old previous faithful named PUP at the marina. We all could not resist scratching his sides and telling him what a beautiful dog he was. Later in the day the marina manager found us and said we had been reported loving up a puppy. She wanted us to know that the puppy was a stray that someone dumped last week, she had been caring for it a few days hoping someone would come by and claim it, but as skinny as he was .... he's definitely a stray. Well, longer story short the poor stray puppy is now RICKY and joins our other loved one LUCY at home with us now. Ricky is maybe 4 months old and goes in for neutering this coming Wednesday. We are filled up now with two dogs and two cats now. Fortunately we live on an acreage and can handle this. Ricky's story is having a happy ending .... many stray's and breeder "dumps" do not.

I encourage everyone to check out their local animal rescue shelter, many great "best friends" are waiting to give you much love.

Meowza Summer is Near

2007-05-24T15:07:00.000-05:00

Meowza summer is near, check out my mother's day goods (a snapdragon and cauliflower plants) above and Sophie all curled up in the garden produce basket I just brought in anticipation of fresh garden goods, but I still have a wait. Around June 15th I can begin to harvest a little spinach and then other stuff after that. It is funny to watch how the cats seem to love little boxes to curl up in. Sophie is the adoptable cat we are still fostering. She's a good cat so I don't mind, however she stalks me... really. Whenever I go into a room she waits outside the door for me to come out, when i reach down to pet her she scampers off like I shouldn't be noticing she is there. I gave her a rude awakening with this picture but it didn't seem to bother her much because she laid her head back down and continued about her very im-paw-tant business.

Some great smells were coming from the kitchen! I think the one I liked the most came from the seitan o' greatness I have been wanting to try for so long. The recipe was doubled and made one "regular" size and one in quarter logs. The large one was sliced on the mandolin for sandwiches and the smaller logs were cut into "seiteroni" slices - yum! Being no virgin to seitan, I thought it was tough and dense baked liked this, but with the right knife it can be cut really thin which makes it kind of like commercial vegan pepperoni, but a little dry. The mandolin slices remind me of dried beef. I was thinking that the crock pot might work here also instead of running the oven for 90 minutes in hotter months. I like the smaller rolls best and here is my favorite thing that I did with them. GRILLED PIZZA

I was inspired by a journey through blog land one day reading blogs all over the place following a link here and link there.... I don't even remember where I was when I received the inspiration. Anyways when I received it I knew that I needed to try this. We are going camping for three nights this weekend and I wanted to know that this could actually work... it did!

UPDATE: KATE 'S vegan ventures BLOG gave me this inspiration (recipe here). She also has a great mini cookbook.

The pizza I made was super unique with white bean hummus, seit-a-roni slices, pickled beets, grilled onion and chopped green pepper. Despite unique, although nothing I would "write home" about, it was satisfying and vegan. I was out of everything tomato for a sauce and had little choice for toppings.

Basically pizza crust recipes are the same, in grilled pizza cook the crust for 3 minutes, flip and cook 30 seconds more. Next add toppings and cook again until cheese melts, I had no cheese or cheeze for that matter so I cooked until it appeared to be evenly hot (about 3 minutes).

GARDEN REPORT:
Spinach is up and will the first to harvest, corn is peeking through the ground, I have been doing ALOT of weeding, and yukon gold potatoes are looking good. The cauliflower and broccoli plants finally got big enough that the rabbits seem no longer interested. A gardener friend told me that she put plastic cartons over hers until they were 6-8 inches tall, at that height they aren't as tasty to the bunnies. The only problem with this is that I don't get plastic cartons on a regular basis because I do not buy dairy milk. I have also been working on beautifying my front walkway (and my aching back is proof) with petunias, glads, allyssum, and morning glories. The herb box is doing well too: marjora, dill, and chives came back from last year and is doing wonderful. I started rosemary, basil and parsley from seed and then transplanted a few of the healthiest looking plants. I started them in organic growing mix from our local lawn and garden store. I have tried cheap potting soil before, but there is a science to starting new plants stuff and it does not work well.

I have also been keeping a written journal of our garden layout / location of plants since 2003. Once reason I do this is because I rotate crops yearly to keep them moving so they do not get planted in the same place two years in a row. I learned that I should not plant root vegetables where cabbage family plants has grown for three years or they will get a bunch of dirty pinholes due to a bug that likes the cabbage plant and manages to have an effect for at least two years. Also moving the plants each year helps to keep pests that like a certain plant "guessing" and infestations are kept as minimal as possible.

Falafel everyway you possibly can and homemade pizza

2007-05-15T19:33:00.000-05:00

Hi Blog World. Remember my picture back in November? I am Lucy, the dog in this "bakehouse" household. I have several interests and yoga is one of them. In this pose I lie on my back with feet in the air, however one paw sticks in my mouth just like you see here. I find this pose to be very relaxing because I will stay like this for more than 15 minutes. This lady here is trying to get me to chase rabbits out of her garden, but that's really not my style ... they remind me of cats and cats are my friends.

The owner of this blog asked me to share some of the food they have been cooking this week. I said sure, but I have to tell you that I am a little disappointed that she did not make any cookies or muffins this week ... I love those! So, to hold true to what I said I would do I present Dreena's (Vive Le Vegan) lightened up Falafel. The meal includes a cuke tomato salad (same cookbook), sliced cukes, onions, red pepper, lettuce and black olives. She put a bit of pineapple on the side and the cup holds some of Dreena's tahini dressing. I didn't like it.... well, maybe with a bit of jelly I would have scarfed that pita down.

The leftovers: She just kept going and going with this stuff, reminded me of the energizer bunny and if I told her that she probably would have wanted me to chase that also. Anyways, the falafel pizza, she took the mix and spread it on a pizza, baked it until she was happy with the looks of it and then topped it with chopped red pepper, tomato, black olive and drizzled with more of the dressing. She liked it well enough, but I think it would have been better with a dab of sugary frosting!

One would think that this would be enough, but we are talking about the queen of leftovers here. Why not a little more Greek delight for lunch.... yuck from me. That is the cuke and tomato salad in the baggie, gotta keep it separate or the lettuce will wilt. Again, more of the tahini dressing in the cup. I think she really likes the dressing, it's been three meals and she still says, "mmmm!"

Last item she wanted me to show ... her very vegan pizza on a whole wheat crust. It contains mushrooms, black olives, broccoli, red pepper, and sauerkraut. She made this during a demonstration for a class..... they were eating within the hour! Impressive huh! She told the class that the more cooking skills you have the less convenience you must pay for. She made 3 very large pizza's and a pan of cinnamon rolls (16 of them) for $8.15. The superintendent happened to come in while they were eating so they shared the food, she was impressed and asked Mrs. Master for the recipe so she could make it at home with her kids. Personally, just the cinnamon rolls would have kept me wagging my tail at her for several days but I didn't get any because she said the class gobbled them down. Imagine that, I guess she just likes them best. :(

BASIC PIZZA DOUGH RECIPE:
1 tsp granulated sugar
1 cup warm water
1 pkg (1 oz) active dry yeast (check date to make sure it is not expired)
1 Tbsp olive oil
3 cups White whole wheat (Wheat Montana Prairie Gold) flour
1 tsp salt
*cornmeal
1. In a small container, mix sugar with water.
2. Add yeast to sugar mixture and stir to dissolve.
3 Pour yeast mixture into a large mixing bowl; add oil.
4. In a large bowl, mix flour and salt.
5. Add one cup flour to yeast mixture, mix with a mixing spoon.
6. Slowly add more flour; mix.
7. Keep adding flour until dough is stiff enough to form a ball. Do not add to much flour; save some for kneading dough.
8. Turn the dough onto a floured surface; knead dough for 8 - 10 minutes, or until smooth and elastic.
9. Cover; let dough rest for 10 - 15 minutes.
10. Divide dough in half or quarters to make 2 - 4 pizzas.
11. Place each dough piece on oil sprayed pizza pans or baking sheets. *I sprinkle the sheets with a bit of corn meal also to keep it from sticking.
12. Roll each piece into desired shape.
13. Pierce dough with a fork and let it rest for 5 - 10 minutes.
14. You are now ready to top your pizzas.

TO FINISH THE PIZZA:
Yield: 4 servings
1 recipe prepared basic pizza dough
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup quick pizza sauce
2 cups mozzarella, provolone, or vegan option cheese (optional)
1 - 1 1/2 cups pizza toppings
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Brush olive oil on top of each dough shape (if desired) and cover with pizza sauce.
3. Sprinkle evenly with cheese (if desired, I skip this part).
4. Top with pizza toppings such as fresh tomato, bell peppers, chopped onions, sliced mushrooms, olives, pineapple, black or green olives, sauerkraut.
5. Bake for 8 - 10 minutes, or until dough is lightly browned around the edges.
6. Serve immediately.

PIZZA SAUCE FROM SCRATCH:
Yield: 1 cup
1 can (8 oz) tomato sauce
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1/4 tsp Garlic powder
1 pinch sugar
1. In a medium bowl, combine tomato sauce and tomato paste until blended.
2. Stir in Italian seasoning, garlic and sugar

Wild Mushrooms and Rhubarb

2007-05-09T18:17:00.000-05:00

WILD MUSHROOMS
DH loves to wander the woods when the temps begin to raise and the days get a little steamy. He has his secret spots, but I cannot tell because mushroom hunters do not tell where their treasures are found. However, this mushroom hunter's wife will tell you what she did with the "loot". This picture is of a wonderful tasty and creamy wild mushroom barley risotto an idea I got from the Lorna Sass cookbook titled, "whole grains: everyday every way". I am saving my version of this recipe in my seasonal family favorite recipe folder.

VWAV: Isa also has a great recipe for Mushroom Gravy that I made, however it was the first time I ever used arrowroot powder and discovered it is not as stable as cornstarch. However the flavor and the meal I made with it, no disappointment here. This is a picture of a wild/brown rice combination topped with the mushroom gravy with a side of homegrown asparagus, and breaded mushroom. Bryanna Grogan has a wonderful seasoned breading mix in her Almost No Fat Cookbook.
As asparagus is beginning to come up in my garden, the pot stickers were the perfect recipe to use up the three stalks I harvested from my garden that day. I found a mushroom asparagus pot sticker recipe in a Light and Tasty Cooking magazine which allowed me to use up some the large mushroom harvest DH brought home the same day. Honestly, it was alot of work making the potstickers, but I made enough to freeze so I could have some on hand for a fast meal. It was worth the effort because I have discovered my family likes anything placed in a crispy little pocket that they can dip into a soy sauce type mixture. I love anything that the family will eat and allow me to use up the fresh produce that grows in our garden while it is still fresh. I froze the pot stickers uncooked on a sheet and them put them in a freezer bag ready to take out and bake at 425 F for 10 - 12 minutes.
To the right is a picture of our meal: broccoli mushroom stir fry, brown and wild rice mix, steamed green beans, and the pot stickers drizzled with a tasty sauce. The schezuan broccoli stir fry came from Bryanna Grogan's: 20 Minutes to Dinner Cook book. I subbed the soy strips called for in the original recipe for DH's fresh wild mushrooms ... the stir fry was much prettier than my meal plate shows so I'll put a close up of the stir fry to the left. It tasted wonderful; schezuan is my favorite!

To finish off the FRESH food meals I have been preparing I made muffins, another Bryanna recipe called
Whole Wheat Cinnamon Rhubarb Muffins.
I make most everything with stevia, so I will give you my version of these muffins.

Wet Mix:
1/2 C smooth applesauce
1 1/2 C soymilk
3 Tbsp light tasting olive oil
1 T lemon juice
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp Ener-G egg replacer
1 1/2 tsp KAL brand stevia

Dry Mix:
2 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Additional:
1 1/2 cup diced rhubarb, can be frozen (mine wasn't)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Prepare muffin cups by greasing or spraying with pan spray (I use special unbleached parchment papers because I like low fat baking and do not want the muffins to stick to the paper and rip apart). Combine the wet mix in the blender or food processor. In a medium bowl combine the dry mix. Add the wet to the dry and stir briefly just to mix. Spoon evenly into the prepared muffin cups. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes. C Cool the pans on racks for 5 minutes, then carefully loosen the muffins with a table knife and turn them on their sides to cool a bit more before serving. These vegan muffins are quite tender when they are very hot, but they firm up with cooling.

Bryanna makes 18 muffins with this recipe, I made 11. I made a decorated tiramisu type muffin using Dreena's agar frosting, fresh strawberries, and a heart shaped candy. They were a pretty presentation to the end of our meal and for breakfast the next morning.Satisfied? I think so.

Soup glorious soup

2007-04-30T17:26:00.000-05:00

I love this time of year! Today will reach almost 90 (60's at night), drop to a high of 71 by Thursday UPDATE: It is Thursday and it didn't reach 70: chilly, windy, with rain drizzle made it pretty chili and good soup weather again. I have heard the saying that if you don't like the weather we have this time of year, don't worry it will by greatly different tomorrow. This is normal for my location. Also, I have finally had the veggies, time, and motivation to try some soup from a couple of blogs I enjoy reading. I copied, pasted, and e-mailed the recipes to myself when I saw them and have kept them in my in box as new so that I would not forget I wanted to try them (hey, gotta remember somehow).

The first recipe I made comes from Catherine at Albion Cooks. I noticed it was similar to a recipe I really liked called "Give me strength" soup that calls for split red lentils and cauliflower, yet a different take on it. I like this one very well also, I will make it again for sure...
Red Lentil Soup (click the title for her original recipe)

Here is my take on the recipe ...

1 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
4 carrots, cut into thin 3/4" - 1' fingers
1/2 cup minced green pepper
2 large cloves of garlic, minced
3 cups water plus 1 1/2 cubes Knoor vegetarian vegetable bouillon
1/2 cup red lentils
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp curry powder
salt
1/4 tsp cayenne
1 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 tsp dried basil
1 tsp roasted sesame oil
1 cup cauliflower, cut into small florettes
1 cup rinsed canned red beans

Heat the oil in a large heavy-bottomed saucepan and saute the onions for 3 minutes. Add the carrot and cook 2 additional minutes. Add the vegetable bouillon cubes, water and lentils, turn up the heat and bring to a boil. Turn down to a simmer and add the remaining ingredients. Simmer for 20 minutes, partially covered. Salt. If the broth is too thick for your liking, add additional water. Check seasoning. Serve.

I made a mistake reading the recipe and actually ended up with only three cups of liquid added to the soup. The thicker soup made me feel like I was getting a heartier meal. I am eating the leftovers for lunch today along with an apple and a tablespoon of cashew butter to dip it in. Yum!

I also finally tried the Quinoa-Peanut Veggie Soup (from Africa) ... the one I tried came was posted by Odd Tofu Mom (the recipe name link will take you there). This is a bit spicy, but wonderfully different. I did not have access to fresh zucchini, so I subbed and added finely chopped green bell pepper... I thought that chopped cabbage could also be a good sub but I did not have any. I did use 1/2 tsp dried jalepeno peppers (purchased from the spice section) and left out the cayenne pepper called for. Although I am pretty sure that to be true to it's origin it is supposed to be neutral colored, but I added some of the red beans leftover from the first soup to give it a little color boost. I liked this soup well enough to eat some and freeze in small portions for future use, but the family is not accustomed to the spice and texture combination.

GARDEN UPDATE:

I planted broccoli and cauliflower about two weeks ago. They are dead and didn't even bother to say goodbye. One day they were there and the next day.... just gone. I have never had a problem with fluffy bunnies before, but then pup was always around chasing them off. Now that pup is gone, fluffy bunny may have gone to far. Fluffy bunny if you happen to be reading my blog you need to know that I have never been a selfish gardener, I have always shared my produce generously. Considering I had over 30 plants, more than enough, I would have been willing to share one or two with you, maybe even three or four. But you my friend cannot have them all! I will buy more plants of course, but you are no longer invited to my garden until you learn some manners.

Auto immune disease ramblings ...

2007-04-25T14:49:00.000-05:00

Med Research 101 today. Welcome to class.

I have been reading about erica's fast on her blog. The fast is her attempt at ending some chronic pain that has been a part of her life. She started a rotation diet some time ago with this same mission, but has not yet achieved a level of health that she has been hoping for. I have been watching this because I have been diagnosed with an auto-immune disease called sarcoidosis and other than taking a steroid with very nasty side effects the doctor can offer no more help. As I have done a little research on how the naturopathic world would handle things I see that a vegan diet is primarily recommended. I know that some autoimmune diseases might be considered environmental/ lifestyle induced, however sarcoid has strong genetic factors which I must offer a sarcastic thanks to a dad, his sister, and my sister --- it affects our lungs the most.

Gallstones in the liver and gallbladder reduce the amount of bile necessary to digest food properly. ... Much of the undigested food begins to ferment and putrefy, leaving toxic waste matter in the blood and lymph .... These molecules have a strong acidifying effect on the blood. To avoid a life-threatening disease or coma, the blood must rid itself of these minute toxins. Accordingly, it dumps these unwanted intruders into the connective tissue of the organs. The connective tissue is a gel-like fluid (lymph) that surrounds the cells. The cells are 'bathed' in the connective tissue. Under normal circumstances, the body knows how to deal with acidic waste material that has been deposited in the connective tissue. It releases an alkaline product, sodium bicarbonate NaHCO3, into the blood that is able to retrieve and neutralize the acidic toxins and eliminate them through the excretory organs. This emergency system, however, begins to fail when toxins are deposited faster than can be retrieved and eliminated. Consequently, the connective tissue may become as thick as jelly; nutrients, water and oxygen can no longer pass freely and the cells of the organs begin to suffer malnutrition, dehydration and oxygen deficiency.

Some of the most acidic compounds are proteins from animal foods. Excessive proteins are temporarily stored in the connective tissues and then converted into collagen fiber. The collagen fiber is built into the basement membranes of the capillary walls. Consequently, the basement membranes may become ten times as thick as normal.

This info comes from ENER CHI WELLNESS CENTER (the bolded words are my emphasis). Although found amongst information about a uninary tract system, I found the explanation of what happens to toxins in the body being "dumped" into the connective tissues (joints) of importance to my own understanding of a process that may be occurring causing other problems. I also realize that gallstones are not the issue for most, but undigested food in the body system is also known as food allergy as the immune system begins to attack these "foreign" large molecules of food that cannot be absorbed properly. As people age and in many auto immune diseases achey, painful joints are an issue. I have also read about how cancer survives in an acid environment, although cancer is not my issue it appears that it and auto-immune diseases with achey, painful joints have acid environments in common.

I know that Dr. Joe Fuhrman is a recognized name for vegan food bloggers thanks to the lunchox gal Jennifer Schmoo. The following information actually came from a site called Diagnose-Me.com. Here's their intro, "Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D. has spent much of his professional life treating disease by fasting his patients. He has an entire chapter in his book, Fasting and Eating for Health, dedicated to the subject of autoimmune disease. He is convinced that fasting with subsequent dietary changes is a much superior approach to autoimmune disease than conventional treatments."

ON FASTING (click for a link to original site)

The human body is designed with the capacity to fast. Although fasting is safe as well as effective, it is advisable to be under medical supervision when on any extended fast.

"Man lives on one quarter of what he eats. On the other three quarters lives his doctor."
- Inscription on Egyptian pyramid, 3800 BC.

Fasting is very different to malnutrition. A poor quality diet consumed for a month results in a lowered state of health. Fasting, on the other hand, gives the body the opportunity to cleanse and heal itself. When free from the responsibilities of digestion, the capacity for self-restoration is enhanced.

Fasting leads to detoxification and improvement in organ function simultaneously.
Fasting often achieves results where other methods have failed.
Therapeutic fasting accelerates the healing process and allows the body to recover from serious disease in a dramatically short period of time.
Fasting is inexpensive and universally available

Sometimes when people try to make major dietary changes without the benefit of fasting they become frustrated. Beneficial changes that can take months or years with careful eating happen quickly if a fast is utilized. Once a person begins to realize the health potential and can see the results, he or she is more likely to become committed to a lifetime of healthful living.

Nature tells us to fast. When we have no appetite during an acute illness, fasting is nature's way to accelerate recovery. Feeding the sick individual when his digestive powers are diminished only serves to further complicate the illness.

Function; Reasons For Use
During an acute viral illness, fasting activates white blood cells and causes more interferon to be produced.

Conditions responding to fasting include: Headaches, hypoglycemia, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, acne and eczema, tinnitus, vertigo, fibromyalgia, glaucoma, cervical dysplasia, chronic neck and back pain, polymyalgia rheumatica, and many others.

Physicians who have used this approach have recorded improvement or recovery from conditions of every description that patients had been needlessly suffering with for years. Besides the diseases already mentioned, one should assume that in the vast majority of chronic medical conditions this approach may give the disease sufferer the best chance to achieve a complete recovery and avoid a lifetime of suffering or medical treatments.

The withdrawal symptoms of addiction to such drugs as alcohol, cocaine, nicotine and caffeine are resolved quickly while fasting. Most people are amazed at how easy it is to quit smoking while fasting. Those who have fasted begin to respect their body in a new way that enables them to take better care of themselves in the future.

Directions
When non-human animals feel sick, they do not eat. Listen to your body when you are sick and have no appetite. Fast for a few days, then proceed to a light diet of fruit and salad vegetables for a few days and you will quickly recover your health.

Counter-Indicators
Conditions for which fasting is not recommended include extreme weakness or debilitation, severe anemia, nutritional deficiencies, porphyria, evidence of weakened kidney or liver function, and pregnancy. Malnourished patients with cancer or AIDS should not fast. Medications should be tapered and discontinued prior to fasting whenever possible.

References & Further Information
A very useful book is Fasting and Eating for Health, A Medical Doctor's Program For Conquering Disease. by Joel Fuhrman, MD. 1995.

ON THE FOOD FRONT...
I made some great chocolate raisin bran muffins with cardamom, but I added a little to much oat flour. They didn't rise much and were a little dry. I crumbled them up onto a baking sheet and baked them at 25o degrees F in the oven until they were crunchy. I have been sprinkling this on top of my soy yogurt and fresh strawberries Yum! Less calories (but tastier) than granola.

I made my muffins using stevia and applesauce. Without the oat flour I am usually very pleased. I will post my stevia sweetened bran muffin result soon. (I even have pictures!) I remade my muffins without the oat flour and am having one with a large bowl of lentil soup with greens added for lunch.

It's time...

2007-04-20T16:50:00.000-05:00

NAME THIS UTENSIL ....
I will tell you what it is at the end of this post.

GARDEN

I feel like an expectant mother who has been waiting for her first born to arrive. The weather has been right and the ground ideal to begin planting again. Armed with my mantis tiller, onion hoe, 4 tine cultivator and sack of seeds to plant I have visions of wonderful produce dancing in my head. The two small, barely visible yellow packets say PEAS, one kind in Sugar Anne and the other Mr Big Pea. Some people get into flowers and yea, I do enjoy these but vegetables fulfil the practical side of me perfectly.

I recruited my mom and niece to help me plant yellow onions. I have three rows which were planted about 1 inch apart so I can thin them while harvesting young onions with greens. We cannot start large onions that can be stored for winter use from seed here because our zone 4 growing season is not long enough so we use bulbs or "sets" for that purpose. I personally have not had much luck with red onions, which I'm not sure why yet and I usually do not use the white onions. I have heard there is flavor differences, but I am satisfied with the foods I have.... except vidalia onions are super sweet. I will buy these on occasion (when they are "in season" at out grocery store at a reasonable price).

Right now I have planted premium green top broccoli plants even though I prefer packman type, snowball cauliflower plants, nappa cabbage, salad bowl lettuce plants, 2 kinds of peas (edible pod and the kind that needs shelled), cylinder beets, and Yukon gold potatoes.
I like English breakfast radish which have a very mild flavor. I am going to wait to plant these for a couple of weeks because they have a short harvest time and I like these esp well in fresh salads. Soon I will have rhubarb and asparagus coming up as well as oregano and marjoram in my herb bed... these come back each year with little assistance. Corn and green beans (planted every three weeks up through August) will wait until the first week of May while tomatoes and green pepper plants will wait until the first of June with chard. Turnips will be planted in June plants and Brussels sprouts near the end of July for a mid to end October harvest because they can stand a good frost and have a better flavor when they get it.

FOOD...
This has become a staple for my regular lunch at work. It is simply a rectangular Tupperware container that holds my salad which I like to top with a container of balsamic vinegar combined with a little salt and stevia. It is made from romaine lettuce, shredded purple cabbage, carrots, fresh mushrooms, and oven baked flavored tofu. I prefer to get my fats in with a square of dark chocolate (not pictured) instead of in salad dressing. Complete the meal with an apple which I usually eat mid morning.
Here is another meal...

This one comes from Dreena's Everyday Vegan. Chickpea Sweet potato casserole served with 1/2 a whole grain wrap rolled around a lettuce leaf with apricot mustard (I made this). I like to add currants into this stew which offers a little color boost. I ended the meal with some chopped fruit (apples, apricots, dates, and currants over leftover brown rice. I sprinkled it with a sweet lime juice, cardamom, and almonds.

It was good.

On a side note I want to mention that my 90+ year old granmother is in a nursing home. She is blind due to two strokes that have also limited her mobility. Her mind is excellent and she loves good company to talk with. It saddened me when I stopped for a brief visit and she said she enjoyed the visit because conversation helps her to feel alive, she doesn't get much otherwise. I have since made it a point to stop regularly to tell her what I am doing with my day. She loves to hear about the garden and often shares stories that certain vegetables remind her of. I think get just as much from the visit as she does. If I would make a list of things that would become well known for a friendly and peaceful lifestyle, visiting nursing homes and talking to a few residents would be one that list. Peace!

And now for the revealing of the above utensil . . .

Easter . . . Snow?!

2007-04-14T19:06:00.000-05:00

This is the facts of living in my Midwestern town even though it is more than one month into spring. April showers are supposed to bring May flowers... no one said anything about April SNOW! This is a picture of green grass topped with white snow. Right now we have an inch and could receive anywhere from 3 - 12 inched today (we got 7 inches). Another sad fact about where I live is that March 26th and 27th we had beautiful sunny skies and temperatures near 80.

Garden Update....
I didn't get the potatoes planted Saturday like I had hoped because it was raining, now behind schedule some however this is not a big deal, I'll still have potatoes. I will be buying broccoli and cauliflower plants already started so these are okay to, I should be still be harvesting about mid June. This is last year's herb bed (and a great dog named pup who is no longer with us), I will post it now for motivation to hang in there a little longer. If I don't I am sure that I would be running off to California or Seattle soon and then you would never see me in blog land because I wouldn't be cooped up inside avoiding our ever changing weather.

Things that make life fun....
Matthew was in an Easter play which we attended Good Friday night, part 1, and Sunday morning , part 2 @ 6:30 am. Part 1 was the traditional Good Friday type play. Part 2 was the resurrection story investigated Dragnet style (a show from the 50's). Matt is the one in glasses. He is wearing a traditional Judea robe under his "Dragnet style" white shirt/ black tie. The play was really cute and if others knew Matt like we do they would realize he was not really acting..... that is his type of humor! His senior prom is coming up. My 6'3" baby boy is again taking a 4'6" little red headed girl for a date (I really think Charlie Brown, Matt's hero, and his little red headed girl has really affected him.)

Food....
I consider myself a family food blogger, so the fact the food follows all the above is not to out of the normal. I have three food pictures to share, considering that I eat at least three times a day and have not blogged in about 8 days = 24 meals, yet I have only three to share..... my diet as of late has been pretty boring. However, what I did do with the burritos will become a staple because I do love the convenience.

SMOKEY CHIPOTLE BURRITOS -
A NICE STOCK OF THEM IN THE FREEZER (this recipe makes 4, but I quadruple it)
I had some TVP taco meat filling leftover in the freezer that I wanted to get used up. I actually prepared it and weighed into a 1 lb package for ease of use later, sure a little fuss but I was happy for the ease of preparation when I made these. I also remember awhile back I was hankering some store bought vegan burritos, but decided that the cost was not worth it. Being a die hard "do it your-selfer" here's my filling recipe....
1 C chopped onion
1 1/2 Tbsp garlic crushed
1 - 14.5 oz can of black beans
1 - 7 oz can of whole kernel corn
1/2 C salsa
1/4 C plain soy yogurt, optional OR use veg refried beans
1 1 /2 Tbsp Smokey Mesquite Seasoning
Saute onions and garlic in a non-stick pan, when browned add corn, black beans, salsa and seasoning. Cook about 2 minutes until all is warmed. Add refried beans (or yogurt is you choose) and cook until mixture is thickened. Add 1/4 of mixture to a tortilla and top with 2 Tbsp soy cheese. Fold in sides, roll up, allow to cool, wrap, and freeze.

I originally got the recipe seasoning idea from a weight watchers core forum that I used to read some time ago, I believe they calculate at 4 points each. I put 1/2 cup of the filling into a whole wheat wrap, fold, wrap in saran wrap individually, and put into a freezer bag. Then when I want one I take it out, remove the saran wrap, and microwave on a plate for one "frozen entree" setting and it is wonderful. I usually top it with homemade salsa, serve with a side salad and follow-up with a square of dark vegan chocolate.

A Little Indian...
This picture is a little steamy, but about as good as the picture. I made it using a recipe in The Enlightened Kitchen cookbook which called it an Indian dish. However it did not use any typical Indian seasonings like curry powder. Although the dish was okay, I was a little disappointed by lack of true Indian flavor which I have come to like, although my family is a little slow to come around. I know they will eventually ... they did with Chinese style stir-fry's a number of years ago.
Last foody picture, an eggroll laptop lunch with a side of tropical veggies and a nice romaine salad topped with carrots and sliced mushrooms. I have salad dressing in the little container. I haven't actually used my laptop lunchbox in a month or so. I found a salad container that I like better so I can take bigger salads. I also have access to a frig now.... next year I will probaly not use my box at all. I will have five kitchens in my room along with 30 sewing machines. I don't regret buying it though.

Sophie likes to sit in the sun on my desk. Here she is comfortably a glow.

Promotion celebration and food (finally)!

2007-03-30T07:59:00.000-05:00

During my "slow down" period our wonderful adopted cat Snowball has been keeping things warm anxiously awaiting my return.

So here I am, thanks Snowball. It's been awhile since I had more to say than, "My thumb is healing" ;) Thanks for all your thoughts and well wishes! Also thanks for your prayers for "D", this young man talks nightly to my daughter on the phone and did prior to his mom's death, so even though we are glad he lives more than an hour drive from us we have felt close to the situation. Reading all my fav food blogs and the great food being prepared while I have been on the "sit and mend" has been ..... actually quite inspiring. I now know at least 200 more dishes that I want to cook soon. April 6th I go back to the doctor for an x-ray and anticipate a mended fracture and a freed thumb. Then I will get the fun job of exercising the stiff digit back into shape. This is also the same day I intend to plant my Yukon Gold potatoes.

GOOD NEWS HERE!
My honey's last day with his current position is today, he has been promoted to a position of more responsibility. Yes, a good thing for us and something that he has been hoping for. My oldest sis always has a nice supply of free hotel stays due her frequent traveler and flier miles, so she booked us a mini getaway to celebrate not only his promotion but the new contract I was offered and signed for next school year (new location with new exciting things to teach and a new FCCLA chapter to start and advise). After a Friday night hot tub time and some eats that I am packing for supper, tomorrow we intend to do a little shopping including stopping at Penzey's to stock up on my favorite spices. I also plan to purchase a few garden seeds (peas, turnips, kale) as well as a few onions sets and plants (broccoli, cauliflower, etc).

Everyone in my family is experiencing new, new, new. We attended a college visitation with my oldest, Matthew, and were very pleased with what we saw. He will continue in a computer science program and will attempt dorm living there next year. For most kids this is a big deal, but Matthew has had many obstacles to overcome to get this far. Although we are not on easy street, this step is a doozy that we all feel can be a successful one. My baby, Melissa, is running the two mile in track, singing and dancing in show choir and is planning to go to a dance this evening. *Sigh* I'm proud of her and all she does, but this growing up stuff makes me emotional!

Now on to eats....
PRESERVING THE HARVEST (tomatoes, part 2)
I did make a batch of spaghetti sauce using tomatoes from my freezer right before I broke my thumb. Here is a picture. I do pressure can it and blogged about doing this in August last year. This time I made enough sauce to can, but then everyone here got in a big tomato sauce eating mood, plus I decided to try Fat Free Vegan's No Cook Noodle Lasagna (pictured below) which used up the last of the pasta sauce I had.

MY SAUCE RECIPE (copied from the August post linked above):

Inspired by Bryanna Clark Grogan's . . . I used Brian's Wine- Free Mushroom Tomato Sauce on page 44 of the Nonna's Italian Kitchen Cookbook. I did add 1 cup of TVP granules and 2 tsp Bill's Best Beefy flavored bouillon powder to this. I reduced the cooking time since the TVP soaks up some of the extra liquid which does not need to evaporate during the long simmer process... I also only simmered for about 1 1/2 hours since I knew I would pressure can it and it would cook for another 1 1/2 hours there.

I also made a double batch of siciliean split pea soup (the recipe link is in the post) using freezer tomatoes. 1 lb toms = a 14.5 ounce grocery store can, 2 lbs = a 28 ounce can. I calculate weight with the tomato skins on, then run the frozen tom under warm water to remove the skin for this recipe. Once the tomatoes thaw in the cooking soup I chop them up using kitchen shears which makes them pretty much dissolve, but they leave the necessary taste. I only keep the skins on when I blend them when I make soup and sauce. I still have two grocery store bags full of frozen tom's in my freezer, but I am sure they will get used up before mid July when I get a new crop of my favorite fruit.

GREEN CONTINUED:
My St Patty's Day feast was a couple of days later since we were out of town the 17th, but this was enjoyed just the same. I purchased some fresh spinach leaves that needed to have the last few in the bag used up, yet they were not edible as a salad anymore so I decided that a lime smoothie (link to recipe) on this special day was in order. Here you see my smoothie along with a plate of Bryanna's chik'n cutlets that I made in my crock pot. They were good and easy, I removed them from the crockpot and onto a plate to cool. Well, all but one... with that one I made a breakfast sandwich and ate it immediately with my smoothie.

I have small freezer bags of turnip and kale greens (cooked down, ready to thaw and use) in my freezer. In my attempt to use these up because I will have more around the first of June (weather cooperating) .... which I definitely will NOT want to eat from my freezer when I have fresh garden produce available. I have been thawing the small snack size bags in my frig and then taking out the greens to chop up and add to soups and stir fries. I did freeze a batch of garlic seasoned greens using a recipe from Dreena's book that I will probably thaw, heat in a pan, and eat as a meal side. This picture is a potato stir fry using the greens. Simple, yet flavorful. I think if I make it again I will add cooked white beans. This is served along side a slice of whole grain toast with apple butter.

Last bit of March cooking.....
CABBAGE (of course) ... Although I didn't make the traditional Irish feast like I did last year, I have been chopping a lot of cabbage.

Fairly odd tofu mom posted about her fav THAI SALAD... I made this recipe twice in the last month. It is beautiful and tasty - I love it. The picture is of a dish of it I took for lunch. It is topped with some sesame seed twigs. The recipe is posted on her blog, click the thai salad word to get to it. You can see my mending thumb here also, the poor thing is purple and usually cold, but lately the right color is beginning to come back which is a good sign of circulation and proper healing. The wrap continues down onto my wrist to keep it in the proper place to mend.

I also made a simple salad in which I add fruit to, I never measure, just chop whatever and put my fav basic cole slaw dressing on it.

SWEET/ SOUR MAYO DRESSING
I like this best on broccoli salad, shredded carrot salad, and cole slaw. Just whisk it smooth in the small magic blender cup. Combine:
1/2 C favorite lite mayo
2-3 Tbsp cider vinegar
1/4 tsp KAL brand stevia extract powder

APPLES (they are an Irish Thing too!):
The bakehouse has an apple tree that bears fruit every second year. Last year was one of them. I made some s/f free (stevia sweetened) apple pie filling. Although I had some grand ideas on what I could do with this, so far I have been enjoying it straight from the jar or warmed and topped with some cold vanilla soy yogurt and granola. Someday I want to make small hand held pies with it. Here's my granola and yogurt topped treat:

Last, but not lease, here's a picture of the cat we are still fostering for the PALS organization. SOPHIE is adoptable. She was the mother of the second batch of kittens we fostered and found homes for around Thanksgiving. She is cuddling up on my rocking chair, such a sweet kitty.

For now I hope everyone is enjoying their spring recess (if you have one) and is staying safe from the tragic path of tornadoes that recently ripped through a section of the Midwest. We have had some absolutely wonderful weather here... today a bit chilly with drizzle (blustery), but early this week we were sitting in the 80's!

Happy Blog Birthday

2007-03-18T14:08:00.000-05:00

March 17 my blog turned one year old and I've been married another year (19 and going strong!). My thumb feels good enough to take the protective plastic off, but I know that to have a good fix I've been warned to keep it on for the whole six weeks. DH and I went with 25 rowdy (and some uncivilized) teenagers and three other adults to a church weekend event in another state. We and they had an awesome time even if not much sleep was involved. A friend of my daughter lost his 39 year old mother suddenly due to an anuerysm on the 12th, he went to the weekend trip also... my heart was really breaking for him. If you'd like to think of "d" and give a quick prayer for him and family I extend the effort to tell you about it for that purpose.

I have been thinking about gardening and beginning to order. We are going through some major property purchases and related dealings right now, so the face of my garden will be changing greatly this summer. I am looking forward to it. March 21 is the first day of spring. We plant potatoes, a few onions, and some greens seeds on Good Friday usually. Our average last frost date is May 15th and we garden until mid October (short growing season). Soon I have my left hand back in use for cooking and typing, until then I am slowed down tremendously so I haven't been posting much.

Until then... I am still reading other blogs (just not typing much). Happy St Patty's day! Check out my archives from a year ago and you'll find some corned gluten roast as well as big beautiful bran muffins. CHEERS and happy soon to be spring!

Still alive...

2007-03-15T16:07:00.000-05:00

Test

Yes, I passed the test (Thanks kleo!).

I added "my blog" to my cell phone address book. I then used the key pad to add my blogpage e- post address in stead of a phone number. I can see by my word test above that I can instantly post a message and pictures by texting a message to my blog page. Isn't that just "techy" of me to figure out. :) Sure I had done it once before but it wasn't as easy as pushing one button like it is now.

By the way I have began to cook again and single handedly wash dished. I can chop veggies pretty well. My thumb is so protected that I do not have to worry about cutting it when I slice onions. Thanks for a double dose hug veg-a-nut. I feel so warm and fuzzy in side y'all.

We got the power ..

2007-03-06T17:31:00.000-06:00

HUGS! To all you who commented and left well wishes. We have power and the worst of the branches picked up. Many people around us still do not have power even after two weeks, which means no heat for many but some do have gas powered generators (not us). With the cost of gas being at almost $3 gallon it takes a good 20 gallons a day to power a small house. Dave's work was running generators to power up the entire plant which took more than 50000 gallons of gas a day however there were three days he did not work last week. Many shelters had opened up for showers and just a warm place to stay.

What am I to be thankful for. My home canned food red beans (seasoned), rice, black beans soup, green split pea soup, pickled green beans, jellies, bread I had previously baked in the freezer, etc. We had a propane cook stove to warm things up with (an electric household convection oven doesn't work without electricity) and was thankful that it was cold enough outside that we just allowed nature to keep our freezer goods at the bakehouse cold by opening a couple of windows in the freezer room... we didn't lose anything (yeah!). Other things we were thankful for included a propane heater for the main level of our house, a shower at the school, candlelight, a battery operated radio, bottled water, and each other.

My thumb is healing... four and 1/2 weeks of still having it wrapped :( - the wrap is annoying and my hand occasionally itches inside of it. Washing dishes and ease in going to the bathroom are things I miss the most. I'll be lurking around blog land awhile catching up on my favorite blog reads for a while longer. I'll also be working on that using the harvest frozen tomato post part 2. CHEERS!

It's a crunchy day at my place...

2007-02-26T12:07:00.000-06:00

Hi! I am taking some time off from blogging to deal with life. I fell Friday and landed on my thumb, I broke the bone under my knuckle. This slows down my typing speed as I have limited mobility of my left hand fingers. We are buried under 4 inches of ice and had lost electricity. Although we have finally regained power it is unstable and the lights blink on and off. We also lost many tree limbs that are covering our back deck and yard that will be cleaned up soon. Weather forecast says more ice and snow storm is in store for tomorrow and again this weekend. The whole family is home today and I am actually sending this blog entry via my cell phone. I hope all my favorite bloggers are doing well and I will to be back soon (my left hand will be casted for the next six weeks).

This is a picture of a branch that fell from our tree Sunday.

The above picture was taken by Melissa. I think it is beautiful, but it is also a close up of the branches that fell on our deck.

Yes Sir that's my baby ....

2007-02-20T21:19:00.000-06:00

I know ... two posts in the same day, you are probably thinking, "Come on lady, get a life", but today is a special day. We captured my daughters taekwondo board breaks on the digital camera. Don't forget to check out the great looking seitan keilbasa below while you are here too.

Click on the picture below for the video demonstration, it is very short, so shouldn't take to long to load.

That was with the hand, this is with the foot.... high in the air!

Yes the men are standing on chairs and yes this is my 15 year old daughter. Yes, I'm a proud mom. :o)

Lunchboxes, gas and keilbasa

2007-02-20T16:43:00.000-06:00

This weekend I made some seitan that I thought my readers would enjoy seeing. I was impressed with the fact that this was cooked in my crockpot.

The original recipe came from Bryanna Clark Grogan, it is kielbasa style heavy on the garlic and pepper. All seitans recipes she has are good, but this one is simply my favorite. Since she is coming out with an e-book on seitan making soon I will encourage anyone to give it a try. Comparably I have been a Bryanna seitan fan from the beginning and have been satisfied with no desire to stray. My perspective is that nothing compares. She also has so many wonderful seitans using a variety of flavors and ingredients, I have never been bored or lacked trying new recipes either.

Picture #1: Seitan rolled out on the counter into logs. This dough uses tofu as a wet ingredient. The texture is my families favorite. They do not like seitan without tofu - I like them either way, but there is a very big difference when regular firm tofu is used.

Picture #2: Logs placed into the warmed and intensely flavored cooking broth. This broth was cooking while I made my guten dough. I use a BOSCH kitchenaid dough hook to mix it... I let it knead for 10 minutes so the gluten is very well developed.

Picture #3: The cooked logs (overnight on low in my 6 quart oval pot). The smell permeates the house.

Picture #4: The logs removed from the crockpot and placed on a plate. I sometimes quarter a log and use on hotdog buns or set as a protein portion on a plate with a main grain dish and salad.

LUNCHBOXES . . .

I have a few pictures of recent lunchboxes too, although they are not the expected "using the harvest" post I have promised but not yet completed it dies use up some of my home canned goods. The red beans were home canned using the wonderful and flavorful recipe in Bryanna's Almost No Fat Cookbook for Red Beans and Rice.... the first red bean recipe I have ever tried, good enough that I keep coming back to it. When pressure canning legumes the required time to process is 1 hour 25 minutes under 1o pounds of pressure. Since the temperature is so high and long I soak the legumes and bring them to a boil, cook five minutes and then proceed with the recipe. I do not cook any of the veggies, just combine all, divide evenly between the pint jars. They are perfect once all is processed. I ate on one pint jar two days in a row for lunch... one day with orange and red sides and the next with a big scrumptious salad. The rice was prepared in my rice maker.
Then I made a meal of eggless rolls, salad and tropical fruit mix. The sauce is my own homecanned plum sauce which I got the recipe from an Andrea Chesman book (see my side links). It is a little hard to see in the picture.... actually it was a little hard to see in my kitchen too because it was eaten so fast that if you didn't make a quick grab you didn't get any.

SAY NO TO GAS
I have read many times that "healthy" food causes some to have painful gas or other negative side effects. As a vegan and whole foods promoter I must admit that when I first started changing my diet I had problems and occasionally still do with some foods. I was reading book by Dr McDougal (one of my first vegan reads) he mentioned that a client of his health resort mentioned that his diet should be called the Mc Bugle for obvious reasons. I was saddened that this must be a consequence and ate small amounts of food, but the food was healthy and fit the requirements I had however did not have enough calories. I became weak with low blood pressure (dizzy spells) and anemic. I was not ready to give up and I knew I needed to eat more despite the consequences... at the time I learned about fennel tea, ginger, and other digestive remedies. Finally I started finding information about food allergies and the the symptoms of such. I know that it is an overload of various foods that causes me digestive upset, not just "healthy" food or "soy", although I never figured out the science of eating w/o ever having complications I have reigned to carrying this little jar of pills with me and use it when I have a day in which I eat a hodge podge of food or that some food may disagree with me... cabbage, corn, amaranth, quinoa and millet have all given me problems at different times (yet unpredictable), however not when I take this. To me it's worth it to have the confidence that I can eat what I desire.... whole foods, healthy foods, soy foods, vegan foods, etc.

That being said I can continue to post whole food, bean filled, vegetable abundant meals that are healthy for me and considerate of others.

Using the harvest, part 3 (tomatoes)

2007-02-15T07:17:00.000-06:00

USING WINTER STORAGE TOMATOES

picture: Tomatoes taken directly from the freezer and put into the crock pot. These were cleaned, dried, and placed into the freezer to be used with skins intact and stems removed. More pictures below.

How about red for a cold February day? A red soup fit perfectly with our "HEART"-y meal. Back to my using up the harvest series...

Tomatoes rank number one for garden canning endeavors and as a high acid fruit they can be processed in a water bath canner. They are the veggie I grow the most of, but as far as canning I usually find that when all the tomatoes are ripening I am to busy dealing with all the other garden produce. I learned from a fellow long-time farmer's market vendor (age 65 +) how she deals with the tomato abundance in September - October. ... she just wipes off the fruit to remove dirt and put them in the freezer to use when she was ready. I have done this also for several years. To begin I freeze them in a single layer using a pop flat box (this way they don't mash), then I place them a common grocery store plastic bag to keep them from falling all over my freezer until I am ready.

Tomatoes in recipes usually require 1 - 14.3 oz can or 1 - 28 oz can of tomatoes. I calculate that one pound of fresh (or frozen) tomatoes with skins removed is the amount for a 14.3 oz can recipe. To save time my tom's are usually in a cheap plastic grocery sack and from experience I consider a 1/2 full grocery sack is somewhere around six pounds. A quart size bag of medium tomatoes is the equivalent of a 16 ounce can (or 1 lb) and a sparse gallon size freezer bag of tom's equals the amount in a 28 ounce can, however I use the medium and large size ones which require more "air space" to make it more like a 28 ounce can in recipes. I did actually weigh them for a few years, but then I got to the point where I could eyeball a pound or two pretty well.

FAQ's about freezing tomatoes

Freezer burn ... Since I mentioned that I put them in a common grocery store (thin, cheap) bag, I bet that is what you are wondering. When I intend to make large batches of pasta sauces, BBQ sauce, tomato soup, etc I will have them used up by February. Since these foods are well seasoned I have never really noticed anything awry. I did go to the time and expense of using gallon size freezer bags one year and when I opened four or five at a time it seemed like such a waste. The farmer woman who gave me this advice said she just kept them in the box, she never even bothered bagging them or covering them. Again I stress that we used them up within six months and they were never defrosted and froze again at any point which is usually the reason for ice crystals.

Diced canned tomato similarity? The helpful farmer woman said she made soups and salsa with her freezer tomatoes. I like a chunky style salsa (which a frozen tomato cannot do), so I use them for soups and sauces only. The frozen tomato does not offer body, just flavor and volume. I cut the frozen tomato up when it is still frozen using a paring knife and acting quickly so my hands do not freeze or after it is in a cooking soup and thawed, then I use my kitchen scissors and chase after the tomato body cutting it into bits and pieces (sorry for the graphic description).

picture #2 above:
I let them cook on low overnight. You can see the the tomatoes are actually floating in a potful of clear tomato liquid. Unless pureed or the skins are removed and the tomato body is chopped the texture is not good at this stage, but it does maintain all of the tomato flavor. However you must remember when you buy them form a can salt is added and sometimes acidic preservatives are added, so this fresh tomato pot will not taste the same unless you doctor it.

Picture #3 above:
I used a hand blender to emulsify the tomato body and liquid together. I have a powerful kitchen aid hand immersion blender that works wonderful, and in this picture you can see it brings a bright red color that is basically a tomato puree with the consistency of what you would open from a can but without the salt or other preserving acids. Because my hand blender is powerful you cannot tell the skins are in this. Next I added the other ingredients required of TOMATO SOUP (link to my recipe) and let it cook on low while I went to work. When I came home I pureed again and ate tomato soup for supper with sandwiches. I personally like a red tomato soup that I add some dill or basil to right before eating, however I have known some who like a creamy, pink soup I guess you could add plain soy milk or pureed silken tofu to it if you desired.

Once the soup is pureed with the flavoring I could pour them into pint jars and further process with my pressure canner. Because I have low acid foods in there (carrots, onions, etc) I would process them for as long as the food that takes the most time. With this soup because I added no legumes I would process at 45 minutes for a pint, but then if I also needed to process tomato based pasta sauce of which I add mushrooms and TVP (a legume product), I would go ahead and place these jars with the others and process for 1 hour 25 minutes because that is what is required for the legumes. The way I made the tomato soup above may separate in the jar into the a layer of clear liquid. This is okay and can just be stirred to remix.

Another use for frozen tomatoes:

Bryanna's quick chili from the 20 minutes to Dinner Cookbook

This is one of my favorite fast easy winter soups. I take a frozen tomato and run it under warm water until the skin cracks and then peels right off. I do this with as many tom's as I need. The weight of the frozen fruit is the same as the fresh. I sometimes throw them in the frig and left them thaw after this, but am usually in a hurry and just begin chopping up the frozen fruit with my sharpest knife to throw into the soup. The chopped tomato body will basically dissolve and no texture will be left, just taste since the skins are removed. This works for any soup. Always taste for salt after the product has cooked... remember these have not had commerciall acids nor salt added to then.

MORE TO COME SOON:
Next tomato post will be about canning homemade pasta sauce and Italian Stufado stew.

Six weird things about me....

2007-02-13T08:03:00.000-06:00

I've been tagged by Erica to tell you six things you did not know about me (and to be honest MAYBE do not want to know about me).

1. My fifth grade teacher gave me the nickname of Dorito accidentally. She was calling on me to answer a question and that is the word that came out of her mouth, somehow it stuck with me.
2. I crochet my own dishclothes once every six months (that seems to be how long they last). I used to crochet more when my children were little, a skill I learned by watching my mom and sister who can crochet an regular size afghan in two days.
3. I had no desire to cook or learn how to cook until 9 years ago and then all the "sudden" I became a kitchen diva not able to learn enough, but then I changed my dietary preferences to became vegan at that time also.
4. I have taken six "years" (combined high school and college level) of various artistic skill classes and although I never had a desire to work in the field professionally I am known as the artist in my family and can sketch, charcoal, chalk with the best of them. I had a charcoal work sold for $160 at a local consignment shop ten years ago... and yes I was shocked at the price it brought.
5. Someday DH and I desire to volunteer or skills and abilities to the peace corps and travel to another country, it is a dream of ours. We have also seriously considered adopted a child from another country, but notice that the need for kids to be loved in our own country is great.
6. I was arrested for drinking alcohol once when I was 15 years old, I seriously had two drinks and barely registered a number on the breathilizer (didn't like the taste of it). I was charged $25 plus court costs for persons under the legal age. My mom picked me up at the police station and I was very much in trouble. I had to explain to my state educational examining board recently that I was arrested for this (more than 20 years ago), that I was successfully rehabilitated and that my "criminal" record will not affect my professional performance in any way.

Although I don't normally tag. I will change this one time and tag:
Melody

The Great Potato Challenge

2007-02-12T06:18:00.000-06:00

Inspired by my canned potato post Kate of Vegan Ventures asked for ideas on dishes with potatoes.
I could share a few dishes I enjoy that include potatoes and will, but I thought it would be fun to see what other vegan bloggers say about their favorite potato dishes.

The potato picture (click the pix to go to the site I found it) is from www.slate.com and may be copyrighted, so I must give them a proper citation and be thankful this potato recipe page can look interesting.

VEGAN POTATO BLOGGERS: If you would like to link this page on your potato blog entry it will appear at the bottom of this page. Other potato interested readers can click there to see your potato recipe.

When I first changed my diet I was in a position to attend group meals or to help plan them frequently. To allow myself some food choices in a buffet style meal I always recommended a potato bar that would include a big variety of toppings. Baking a bunch of potatoes in a crockpot (and leeping them warm there) was easy work. If we were serving pot luck style guests would be asked to bring their favorite potato topping. I liked to bring my favorite Chili Sin Carne and serve it with a few morsels of vegan chedda' (although I just usually brought a container of some of Bryanna's cheesy sauce and drizzled that on top because I was on a strict budget back then). A side salad was a must also. This type of buffet really allowed flexibility for everyone's food preferences, even low carbers would munch on salads.

On Sunday's we leave for church around 8:30 and get home around 12 - 12:30. I like to fill my four quart crock pot up with potatoes and cook them on high. At four hours they seem just perfect. Then when we get home we have potatoes ready to top and eat. I will usually have things like veg baked beans, smartlife hotdogs, chedda cheese, already cooked and needs reheated cauliflower and broccoli, etc in the frig to pull out for quick fixings. The leftovers get stored in the frig and we eat on them during the week in whatever way strikes our fancy.

VEGAN POTATO LINKS:

The daughter of Fairly Odd Tofu Mom recently posted this awesome presentation: Olivia's Incredibly Famous (vegan) Brats and Potatoes

Dori's Dry Potato Soup Mix. When my children were younger I used to make these up ahead of time (and in large quantity so we could just scoop out amount needed) so they could make an easy meal for the family.
Sweet Potato Oven Fries. Sometimes I wonder why I don't make these more often.
Bazu says, " love potatoes in any form- cubed and roasted in the oven with olive oil, garlic and rosemary? Yes.

Potato salad with onions, celery, vegannaise, and fresh dill? Yes.

Mashed? Oh yes. Mmmmmm, potatoes, how do I love thee. There- that was my valentine's day poem. =)"
Axtvegan says white food is still a it of a concern for her, but she recently made green beans and red potatoes and purple potatoes she would eat roasted anytime! "
A picnic in France: New Potato Salad.
BRYANNA'S POTATO AND MUSHROOM MISO SOUP
I want to try this sometime, so am adding the whole recipe here to remind me. :b
Combine in a pot:
4 c. light broth (to make a quick "dashi" [Japanese broth], I use mushroom bouillon cubes [enough for only 3 cups broth] and a piece of kombu sea vegetable-- you can also use soaking water from shiitake mushrooms)
4 oz. any fresh mushrooms, sliced
8 oz. thin-skinned potato, scrubbed and thinly sliced
1 medium onion, thinly sliced

Simmer about 15 minutes, or til potato is tender. Remove and discard kombu, if using.

Add:1/2 (12.3 oz.) box firm or extra-firm slken tofu, or 6 oz. medium firm regular tofu, in cubes

After heating tofu, turn off heat. Mix some of the broth with:
1/3 c. brown rice or barley miso

Add back to soup with:
2 green onions, thinly sliced

Serve immediately. Servings: 4

Nutrition Facts
Nutrition (per serving): 136.4 calories; 15% calories from fat; 2.4g total fat; 0.0mg cholesterol; 880.0mg sodium; 588.5mg potassium; 22.0g carbohydrates; 3.3g fiber; 4.0g sugar; 18.7g net carbs; 8.4g protein; 2.3 points.
Bryanna's CAUSA (Peruvian Potato Salad). I made this dish to serve at a cultural dinner hosted by us when we invited friends over to share there experiences living in this area for more than a year with us. This was my first experience with blue potatoes, we thought they were so fun that we planted them in the garden the next year.
Bryanna's Potato and Sweet Potato Gratin
Bryanna's Bread Machine Sourdough Potato Bread

Also, about canned potatoes. Of course I would rather eat a fresh potato, but having them already cooked ready to dice, mash or otherwise prepare to add to another seasoned dish I like them for this use (soups, stir-fries, etc). I have noticed a difference in taste between the type of potato I used to can with, I will not can russet potatoes in the future. I will definitely grow more yukon gold though. I keep hearing reports from my other canning friends that this is what they prefer to use. Personal note: Keep a cold storage potato supply for fresh potatoes and can a few because I like the prep they offer.

I am still working on my tomato using the harvest post and should have some great things to share by the end of this week. Midwest Vegan, I will include pictures and a thorough description of texture, etc in this post.

ALSO HAPPY V-DAY FRIENDS! I hope to bake up something fun for Wednesday, something like a Dreena cake ... maybe something including chocolate and raspberries (oh yummers).

Using the harvest, Part 2 (potatoes)

2007-02-07T16:34:00.000-06:00

PLEASE KNOW THAT POTATOES ARE A LOW ACID FOOD AND CANNOT, I REPEAT CANNOT BE CANNED/ PROCESSED IN A WATER BATH CANNER. LOW ACID FOODS REQUIRE A HIGHER TEMPERATURE TO PROCESS SAFELY AND ONLY A PRESSURE CANNER CAN ACCOMPLISH THIS. PLEASE FOLLOW DIRECTIONS ON YOUR PRESSURE CANNER AND CONSULT WITH THE BALL BLUE BOOK CANNING GUIDE PRIOR TO ATTEMPTING TO CAN POTATOES.

I also added information about water level in the potatoes at the end of this post.

The potato mash seen here is made using 1 1/2 quart of canned potatoes a bit of plain soymilk (1/3 cup) and a tad of nutritional yeast (1/2 Tbsp). Straight from the jar, drained, and placed into a bowl, I mashed them by hand with a potato masher and then made VWAV punk rock chickpea gravy to top. I liked the gravy even though some of the spice mixture (like every spice in the cupboard) made me wonder what I was attempting to accomplish. I went to the ppk kitchen site to see if I could find a recipe similar, but no avail... this one must be a treasure for the book. Here is a link to ppk general gravy recipes posted on that site. My picture features the potatoes with a side of home canned corn and stuffed mushrooms made using whole grain bread crumbs from my freezer. I make bread crumbs with the last of a loaf OR when I have a loaf not turn out so well.... these breadcrumbs happened to come from a loaf that I forgot to add the salt to. The corn was cut off the cob and canned with some dried red bell peppers for flavor.

ABOUT CANNED POTATOES
Someone mentioned that my pictures are small. I usually turn them into thumbnails before uploading them or it takes 3 minutes or more to upload one picture, but as a thumbnail it uploads almost instantly and I do have DSL connection. On my full size home PC the pictures appear big on the screen, but on my laptop they appear small. I plan on taking a closeup of each of the canned goods I use and post it on this blog to show detail in the product when I begin to use it. Today's post will focus in on the potatoes. This is the first year I have canned potatoes because they are a low acid food and I didn't have the ability pre-pressure canner. (See below for information on cold storage.)

My canning friend told me awhile ago her family likes yukon gold potatoes the best as a canned good in comparison to other varieties of potatoes. The few yukon gold potatoes we had this year were eaten early so I had none to can, only a generic russet and pontiac red. I know these have a firmer texture and pleasant yellow color. I was a little concerned that the choices I made might end up mushy after the processing and maybe only good for mashed potatoes, especially the more tender and thin skinned red potatoes - not so. Now that I have used both varieties I can not that neither are mushy, the only big difference is in the skin. I left the skin on both, the russets skin is tougher but skips right off with a slight rub of the fingers, I did leave the skin in when I made mashed potatoes but I paid special attention to ensuring that they were well blended. Yukon skin is also thin and could be left on for canning purposes.

While comparing these jars visually (these were canned in July and it is now February) the jarred red potatoes look somewhat cloudy, but I can see the defined line of starch as well as the clear liquid separately. I believe this is just a little starch release and the red obviously has more but then potatoes also have various cooking properties. When I opened the jar and drained the liquid the starchy cloud disappeared, the potatoes felt normal, the liquid was not thick, it really was no problem .... just a visual difference between the two. After draining I dumped the potatoes into a bowl and began mashing with a hand held potato masher. They broke apart into what reminded me of a cubed hashbrown and I think could have easily been used for that. In canning I let the skins on these and the skin is thin enough that it causes no problem leaving it on while cooking.

ABOUT COLD STORAGE
Previously we kept potatoes in a cheap food cooler with a blanket wrapped around them at the bakehouse because we don't heat the bakehouse in the winter (except a special heat tape for the water pipes) so things might freeze there esp when we have temperatures like we have been having (-15 degrees F). The blanket and cooler did protect them through our winter months however this is the coldedt I have seen us since we started gardening and preserving five years ago. I have made it through March with fresh potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and even longer with squash. However by March the potatoes will be growing roots (which I will break off if I am going to cook them), so I use those to plant again. April is the time (Good Friday) to plant potatoes in my village along with some spring greens and a few onions.

In addition to the potato mash I also used 1/2 of the russets to make this simple creation for breakfast. I started by sauteing yellow onion slices and a little minced garlic. I had about 1/4 C chopped red pepper left in a baggie in the freezer so I threw that in. I sliced half a quart jar (after the liquid was drained) of the russet potatoes, saute'd a few minutes more and then added some thawed chopped spinach (a handful ran it under warm water in a small colander). Last I sprinkled with some organic bac-un bits. It was pretty good and I didn't need to kill it with ketchup to give it flavor. It didn't need salt because the water in the jar has a little salt in it and the bac'un bits were salty too.

Here's the label on the bac'un bits I bought. They are vegan and organic. I have tried very red colored vegan bac'un bits before and never cared for them because they reminded me of salt and grease, but these are not to bad.... a flavor of it's own. They are also a natural colored brown.

OTHER THINGS CANNED POTATOES ARE GOOD FOR...
1) open, drain and add them to any stew, Indian food recipe, soup, or other stir fry. They are already cooked and can be used for "fast food".

P.S. I recently had a conversation with someone who asked if I was from the "hippe" generation. Well, no patchouli smells or psychedelic flower symbols here BTW. I grew up in the eighties and although it was "small town no where" I was influenced by the punk movement. I was a heavy metal fan and owned a pair of parachute pants.

From the comments section I had a question asked that I answered there, but then decided I wanted to add it to this main post also.

Dori, I am curious about the air in the potato jars. I thought that all the food was supposed to be under water?
Good question erica. I called the Iowa State Extension experts and asked them the same thing when I first saw the water level (which was not this low when I started)... meaning I had the potatoes covered and 1/2 inch from the top before they went into the pressure canner. After canning at 10 lbs pressure for the required 45 minutes (time set by the ball canning guide) for a quart jar the water level lowered below the potatoes. The extension office said that this was normal, the vegetables soak them in when cooking and some of it comes out in steam during the pressure cooking process. The important thing is that the temperature is high enough to kill the botulism bacteria, ONLY a pressure canner that is working correctly and at the right pressure setting as well as the correct time can accomplish that task. Once this happens the water level below the potato is acceptable, however it may be a bit drier.... I didn't not find any difference between the tators at the top and the ones at the bottom. Pressure cookers can be checked at a county extension office.
I would definitely recommend getting the canning guide (see lnk on my sidebar) prior to attempting LOW ACID canning. It has great pictures of the process and explains everything is great detail.

I think this weekend I will be making up some pasta sauce in my slow cooker using frozen tomatoes from my freezer. I freeze my tomatoes whole in a can flat box, then stick them in a grocery sack until I am ready to use them. Using the harvest part 3 will tell you more - stay tuned. I loved the comments. I know that the site reader tells me what number of visits I get a day, but I never know who is really interested in what I am saying and one sided conversation can get boring.... so thanks.

Using the harvest, part 1

2007-02-05T06:11:00.000-06:00

Woot! My new canning storage area in the basement is up!

I put this on DH's "Honey Do!" list to be created since I purchased my 23 quart pressure canner/cooker way back in July 2006. Although I had a rack that held 8 jars deep I did not have the width to see what jars were behind others. If I wanted a certain jar I had to move many others to get to it... not convenient at all. I also had zero space to store the jars once they were emptied until they were to be used again, so a corner of my kitchen had a box full of jars needing to be moved somewhere. However all these problems have been solved with one little purchase and Saturday assembly - DH and DS found it to be a good project for a frigid winter day.

Finally, I can show you canned goods that I have left from last years harvest, minus some tomato based pasta sauces and apple sauce or butter (I haven't decided yet) that I intend to make with the fruits stored away in my freezer. I still have broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, greens , and some corn in the freezer that we have been chowing on. Fortunately I can get to this easily now also, previously the rack I had canned goods on made my time getting to and using the freezer in our basement difficult.

Foods on my shelf - - - -
Yearly favorites (links to my previous blog entry about these foods):

Onion curry relish, piccalilly: a dutch pennslvania treat, caraway pickled beets, dilly green beans, dilly cauliflower, dilled cauliflower carrot red pepper mix, bread and butter pickles (stevia sweet), "sushi" ginger carrot cucumber pickles (stevia sweet), salsa, strawberry rhubarb very low sugar (stevia sweet) jam, low sugar orange marmalade, apple sauce, apple butter, pear butter, pumpkin butter, and diced apples (just the whole fruit in a light lemon juice and stevia sweetened water) and cinnamon that reminds me of diced pears, zucchini relish (my purple ribbon county fair winner).

The pressure canner gave me the ability to can russet and red kinebec potatoes, green beans, corn and sweet potatoes. Previously I used a cold storage for these (which I still did for some), but it is so much nicer now to have these veggies ready to open a jar and go.

New in 2006:

Plum Sauce (made with 2# purchased plums from a farmer's market I went to), nicely seasoned with oriental five spice powder ....kind of like a sweet and sour sauce, but definitely made with fruit. I sweetened mine with stevia. The recipe I based it off of came from the book Summer in a Jar.
Avjar (link to recipe)- Balkan red pepper relish, a recipe from Bryanna Clark Grogan. Although she doesn't can it I used the same canning time that animal meat takes (1.5 hours under 10 pounds pressure). My thinking was that if the time and pressure can allow animal meat to be preserved then surely it kill the bacteria in this sauce. I opened a jar of it after four months and it had a wonderful consistency and was very good.... just as good as when I made it fresh and refrigerated it.
Cranberry Chutney (link to the recipe) - I found this recipe in a book called Gifts from the kitchen. I made mine sugar free (using stevia instead) and added apple sauce to measure the quantity of the sugar originally called for. I added this to a sandwich using sliced seitan to resemble some of the after thanksgiving sandwiches I have seen in recipes.... yum. I also used it on crackers and soy cream cheese as well as toast one morning that I wanted to finish up the last of it from the jar. This recipe will make it to the yearly list. I did use marked down cranberries from the grocery store (2 / $1). My recipe says this chutney can be made using frozen cranberries also, I stocked up on that sale so I could make it again if I want but I will most likely use the remaining cranberries in smoothies.
Stevia sweet apple pie filling - our tree gave us nice abundance this year. I adjusted a recipe from our state extension office family hotline. They actually emailed me the recipe I requested (sugar free apple pie filling) and canning requirements. I made mine sugar free however it does use apple juice so it is not watered down sweetness. The family LOVES this recipe. It is a fast dessert to take some of this, sprinkle it with granola and top it with some soy yogurt or ice cream for a fast dessert.
Sweet corn relish - this is delightfully different from Chesman's book, but pretty yummy to dress up a taco salad or wrap. It adds a sweet and sour type flavor combo.
Legumes and home canned soups.... Money saver and time saver. This has been my favorite use. Canned convenience soups can be so expensive. The fact that I can use my own veggies (sometimes I purchase them) and organic legumes makes the whole hassle of learning how to can like this worth it.

A garden / preserving resource I added to my side bar is author Andrea Chesman. I love her canning book called Summer in a Jar because of the small batch recipes (one quart or pint at a time). Another one is the Ball Blue Book, it is the canning "bible" if there is one and I use it as a reference on low acid and other food times, but I rarely use these recipes. It is nice because it includes dehydrating and freezing preservation also.

While I am on the topic of garden produce and canning I also will let you know of low-acid soups and legumes I have pressure canned and LOVE.

Dori's COOP Black Bean Soup (link to recipe)
Sicilean Style Spilt Pea Soup (Bryanna's Fiber for Life Cookbook)
White Chik'n Chili (my own recipe, but inspired by a Taste of Home magazine recipe)
Basic white navy beans, black beans, black eyed peas ... (not seasoned, just to open and use), and some seasoned ready to use TVP chunks, ground taco TVP meet, and Louisana style red beans to serve over rice.

This is long enough for now, but since I have access to my preserved food I am totally inspired to use it, which I definitely did. If I mentioned a "my own recipe" food here and you would like me to post the recipe, let me know and I will.

Part 2 using the harvest (coming soon)
It will include pictures of :
Dori's canned potato mash with Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy
Stuffed Mushrooms with bread crumbs from the freezer
Bryanna's Fiber for Life Quick Chili with more garden harvest vegetables

Seeds of gardening (idealistic ol' me) ..

2007-02-03T05:43:00.000-06:00

It's February. It's Iowa. It's cold (-2 degrees F for a high today). I'm jealous of some of the great looking fresh veggie dishes I see being cooked in other parts of the country (and out of it). I know my spring will come again though, the garden catalogs are coming in the mail even though I'm not quite totally inspired to read through them yet. I just found out that I will go unpaid for only 4 weeks of the summer and yet will be off for about 12 weeks. As I think about work I may not bake at the farmer's market this summer because I am discovering a growing interest into more gardening. Previously I have been pretty practical in raising my children and food from my garden, but now I am entering into a new phase in family and life and will probably need to change my profile description soon to describe the changing and growing me.

Vegan blog land has been changing as it seems bloggers I first met when I started almost a year ago are busier, but new ones are beginning to appear that are fun/ inspiring reads. Although I still have a passion for friendly (veg) food, I am finding myself thinking more and more about things in life that have given me great meaning and satisfaction. These thoughts are often fueled by what I see around me.... kids. Although there are still homes that can produce children whose needs are met (physical, intellectual, emotional, mental, social), there are an incredible number of kids who aren't----- WHY? My great, big compassionate mamma's heart wants to take them all in and put them to work in my garden, give them common practical household chores, a routine, and someone who is usually busy with something yet awake at the table drinking hot tea at all hours of the night ready to be interrupted to listen to the latest doldrems and excitements. My common cure for all ills (mentioned when it seems appropriately humorous) is, "Have you had any green vegetables today? How about alive food... something still fresh like it came from the garden." Then I mumble something about a body being unable to do it's job of keeping us emotionally balanced and acne free without feeding our "healer" cells the food they need (Mom's cure all = green vegetables, living food).

I can't take them all in of course, but I have been thinking I can offer more skills. Gardening skills in the summer... a day camp of sorts. I had some thoughts about this in the back of my mind for the last couple of years now intertwined with some geographical lesson plans centered around food and cultures, a sprinkle of some social science diversity acceptance for my rural little midwestern town, and food of course.

Although on the outside necessity has made me practical, I am hopelessy idealistic! I have also been totally taken by a book I read for a children's literature class some time ago called SEEDFOLKS by Paul Fleischman.
Amazon review:
"Sometimes, even in the middle of ugliness and neglect, a little bit of beauty will bloom. Award-winning writer Paul Fleischman dazzles us with this truth in Seedfolks--a slim novel that bursts with hope. Wasting not a single word, Fleischman unfolds a story of a blighted neighborhood transformed when a young girl plants a few lima beans in an abandoned lot. Slowly, one by one, neighbors are touched and stirred to action as they see tendrils poke through the dirt. Hispanics, Haitians, Koreans, young, and old begin to turn the littered lot into a garden for the whole community. A gift for hearts of all ages, this gentle, timeless story will delight anyone in need of a sprig of inspiration. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition."

The idealist in me also LOVES books by Sharon Lovejoy. I honestly could not pick out just one of her books as a favorite, although I have pictured one here. This is the book that first inspired me into thinking I could teach young people the love of gardening and eating fresh (real) food with my little one acre plot. It is also the book that inspired me into wanting to see our school lunch programs begin to use locally grown garden produce. Although I personally have not taken action into any serious movement of this sort, I do agree with the efforts of a few I have read about that have. My bent will be different though... I'm a hands on kinda person and I want to give others a chance to play in the dirt or in the kitchen.

As I think warm thoughts about my summer and begin to generate internal motivation for the upcoming planting season I am reminded that my son whose culinary skills have been featured many times on this blog will be home for the summer before going off to the next year of school and although dirty work is not his favorite thing to do, he has always enjoyed having an important role in entertaining others. (He has also decided he would like to switch from computer technology to something with a music emphasis, even though he likes working with computers he says he knows as much as he wants to know about this subject come the end of this semester.) Even people with disabilities can be useful and find great joy in the garden.

There is a new link at the bottom of my sidebar that can help you find a garden blog near you or if you have one and you would like your dot placed on the map, check it out!

Cooking away the cold ...

2007-01-31T08:13:00.000-06:00

(updated)

LINK TO COOK BEHIND THE APRON
I have noticed other blogs I enjoy reading have been posting their 28 cooks "coming out". I did mine a few days ago, but wanted to add a link to it again.

Now back to food (my favorite subject)...
It is really cold here ..... like below zero cold and I'm not talking wind chill. BRRR! I live in an "extreme" (winter and summer temperature differences) weather area. As I was contemplating the ability to complain I decided to look through past blog entries to find warming thoughts, here is a link to a post I made in July when the thermometer was reading over 100 (and no not dry heat). I won't complain anymore. Instead I will begin to think different warm thoughts ... like crock pots and soup. The crock pot is god send, I love warm comforting food when I get home. Yesterday I made a recipe from Bryanna's Oct-Dec 2006 newsletter called LOCRO (a squash and vegetable stew). She didn't make it in the crock pot, but I did. I had it on low all day (about 8 hours) and it worked well. I used 2 3/4 cups mixed vegetables instead of the recommended corn and peas. I also made seasoned brown rice in the rice maker and refrigerated it for quick micro heating when I was ready to serve. Although the recipe looked simple and didn't stand out as exciting, it was excellent.... even DD said this is pretty good. It is pretty colorful too. I have a basket of four more butternut squash I want to use up so I'll be trying more recipes with them soon.

ON TO LUNCHES (Can you tell I'm having fun with these?)
This is a whole grain English muffin sandwich with one of Bryanna's crock pot steak patties / roasted red pepper and onion, a romaine salad with sprouts/ red pepper/ purple onion/ currants, homemade apple pie filling sprinkled with homemade granola, and "sushi" pickles that I made using a recipe from the book Summer in a Jar by Andrea Chesman. The pickles are made with large thin slices of ginger root and carrots and tastes just like the little pink pickled ginger slices on a sushi bar (yum).

The steak again only cut up with some seasoned brown rice, romaine salad with sweet corn relish (Andrea Chesman's book again, homemade using my home grown garden gooodies too), home canned pear slices that I didn't grow (no pear trees here) but bought in abundance from an organic Amish farmer, and strips of roasted peppers and onions to add to my rice and steak. The little red container has balsamic dressing for my salad.

Today's lunch. If you turn your head like you would to read a smiley you will notice that this lunch has a container of Stacey's pita chips, roasted red pepper dip from Marie Oser's Soy of Cooking, romaine salad with carrots and sprouts, a sorta trail mix container including roasted peanuts/sunspire m&m's/ currants, along with a banana which I intend to use as a "poker" to pick up the "trail" mix.
NOTE: The red pepper dip called for 2 cloves of garlic. I used two fresh cloves and let my magic bullet mixer whip it with the roasted red pepper, seasonings and tofu smooth. The garlic has come back to haunt. I really like to taste of this so the next time I make it I will roast the garlic with the red pepper.

Thanks to the Oser cookbook and then confirmed by Megan the Vegan I have been hankering mushrooms. My new Oser cookbook calls for ground chicken style gimme lean, which I have never bought before and I didn't want to make any from scratch so, I then decided to have something different for supper and prepared the mushrooms to use another time. I then remembered the mushrooms I made some time ago using brussell sprouts so I looked it up and decided these are what I would try again . . . . here's the link to my previous entry about them and ia link to the recipe included.

Since I bought a 24 ounce package of the nice stuffer size mushrooms I had plenty of stems and 1/3 of the package which I could make into another dish. A dish like Oser's creamy mushrooms sauce over pasta. I actually left the recipe out and asked DH to make it so supper would be ready when I got home tonight. We'll see how it turns out, DH is a sweetheart and said he would however I will c hop the carrots and onions this morning as a time saver for him this evening. I'm looking forward to it, will share pictures later.

No pictures of the pasta because DD chopped the carrots into a salad with romaine and used up the sliced mushrooms I had planned for the sauce also before DH could get on the pasta. Last night we had pita pizza and salad NOT the pasta. I also still have the mushroom caps for stuffed mushrooms, but intend to use them soon.

Seitan Steaks and New Oser Cookbooks

2007-01-28T19:03:00.000-06:00

Bryanna's new Vegan Feast Newsletter just came out. I always love to see what new ways with seitan she is coming up with. This month my "must try's" include these steaks and some kebabs which I will try next weekend. Sometime my "must try's" get me so excited that I will stay up playing in the kitchen all night. I did start these before bed on Thursday, then on Friday morning we took the steaks out to make lunches and refrigerated the rest.

Picture one.... rolling out the seitan dough. This dough was a bit rubbery-er (that's not a word) and hard to roll out, but they did with persistence, a little water and a rolling pin. The previous seitan cutlets dough in which tofu is added is much softer and easier to roll, actually they were just pressed flat in my hand. I, myself, like them either way however the family usually prefers the dough with tofu (esp in "ham" loafs or spam as one of my sister's calls it).

Picture two.... Dropping the dough in the warm crockpot cooking broth. The broth was in the crockpot for about an hour on low before the "steaks" were ready to drop. I used my new 6 quart crockpot for this. I like the fact that this new pot has a carry feature that locks the lid in place and has a slot on the handle to attach the spoon. I was also amazed at how much it could hold compared to my oval 4 quart pot (which I will always use for the seitan roasts because I like the shape best in that).

Picture three.... What it looked like when I woke up this morning.

Despite the difficulty with the dough we really enjoyed these, however they are made with red wine which DD really didn't like but once she grilled it and put the sauce on it she thought they were good. I like A1 steak sauce, the ingredients list isn't to bad other than that darn corn syrup which is in everything and it is vegan. DH prefers BBQ sauce and DD likes ketchup the best. DS has gluten issues and doesn't get into these. Although I can and have made my own sauces, I used purchased sauces this time.

UPDATE:
Bryanna posted a response in comments about the ability of the seutan dough to be pressed by hand. ALSO - DH just told me last night that this is his favorite seitan steak yet. (yeah) Even though DD didn't like the wine flavor, I did and obviously so did DH.

NEW COOKBOOKS - - - -
At Christmas time I earned enough points on my credit card to get a gift certificate for amazon.com (my favorite reward). I purchased these three cookbooks by Marie Oser. If anyone else has these, would love to hear your favorite recipes.
I first discovered her at the same time I found Bryanna's books. I checked the books out from the library and still have a few handwritten recipe cards in my file box from that time. She uses several prepackaged goods which I could not afford at the time I first found the books, today I more interested in some new ideas and flavor combinations.... maybe I'll try a few of the convenience flavorings or soy meat just to see how they compare with my favorite "from scratch" Bryanna recipes sometime. Besides just the soymeats, there are many other recipes I'd like to try sometime also.

Hope you are all having a great weekend. I have another lunchbox picture to post soon. Today I have the chance to go to my favorite little Indian store when I do some other shopping. I am hoping that the store has their new cafe open (last time I went they were remodeling to allow for it).

Wow! I have a headache and prepared-ness

2007-01-27T18:00:00.000-06:00

It has been sometime since I would stop at the convenience store and get a large cuppa diet cola (caffeine free to make it a "little" better). Now that it is not as easy for me to make up my favorite drink and sip all day like I did when working for myself and around my house, I thought yesterday that a diet cola sounded like a good thing since I was out shopping all day and I was thirsty. Yes, I should have chose the water, they had that too and countless other drinks were a possibility but I "jumped ship" and opted for the pop. "It has only been almost a year since I have had any. 32 ounces surely wouldn't kill me, after all I eat such a good diet and the nasty would be quickly "detoxed" out, " or so I told myself.

WOW WAS I WRONG!

Less than 1 1/2 hours after finishing that 32 ounce thing which I gulped like fresh water I started feeling something like a major migraine coming on. I have experienced many headaches in my SAD eating days although I have discovered since changing my lifestyle that I am not really prone to them. I have also had only one migraine in my entire life. It was a three day affair, not fun at all and I was glad to see go. I (and the doctor after a cat scan) attributed it to the stress of going back to college again after twelve years while managing a household, family, and a teenager with special needs since it didn't come back I was okay with this explanation. I immediately grabbed aleve and hoped that would be the end... not quite, aleve'd up and still have it today. The moral of my story.... I need to continue to "just say NO" when it comes to the artificially sweetened pop. I have never had such a quick reaction before, but I guess now that my body is used to being "un-toxic" these things are majorly noticeable to me now. I have no other symptoms, just the headache for which I am drinking plenty of fluids with hope of flushing out the trigger.

ON TO OTHER THINGS, THINGS LIKE BEING PREPARED FOR ????

I am planning a weekend soup and legume canning session soon. I have been reading the Apocalypse Chow book by Jon and Robin Robertson. Although I am not a gloom and doom thinker, I realized that my pressure canner is a gem to help me in the case of emergency too. However, I got it to save money and be able to get rid of a very large freezer from out bakehouse (which still works and is a place I store garden produce, excess grains, breads, dried fruits, etc. I realized that if the electricity goes out for a week a whole years worth of great organic and home grown frozen goods will not be of much help unless I attempt to feed the entire town a couple of days.

I have read sites where dried veggies, and vacuum packed cans of grains can be purchased to "prepare" for ????? Although I agreed that prepared is something important I never really bought into the idea of having a box of food stuffed away so that I could use it someday or worse to figure out how to use a bunch of dried stuff on a regular basis (so it wouldn't go bad) when I wanted fresh. Now I know with my pressure canner I can have the convenience home canned soups / legumes, prepared TVP taco or "sausage" meet on a regular basis (okay not fresh, but handy and I do like eating it) while at the same time having a stock of something saved for the "big one".

To remind me here's a little about my pressure canner . . .
23 quart pressure canner:

I purchased this wonderful (and large) device around July of last year. I started canning with my garden green bean and potato harvest and continued into soups, spreads, and other low acid foods. I like having some canned food like this on hand, it provides the convenience I need however coordinating a good day of canning of my own soups takes time to use the day wisely for maximum value. For example, 1 pot of Sicilian style split pea soup makes 7 pint jars. A 2 pound black bean pot of feijouda makes 10-12 jars. My pressure cooker holds 18-10 pint jars or seven quart. The quart jars are to big for what we typically consume at one time and if I am cooking to feed this many then I would just crockpot a pot of soup and have leftovers. It takes about 2 1/2 - 3 hours of my time to complete one batch... there is a 1 1/2 hour period in which I simply must babysit the pressure gauge to ensure it stays where it needs to be.

I also like lemon juice from concentrate sweetened with stevia. Now I can have a sweet drink that is not jammed with sugar or worse yet headache provoking chemicals while still be "prepared".

Anyone else prepared? What is in your storage box?

Stuffed in green with a lunchbox

2007-01-25T05:33:00.000-06:00

I made stuffed green peppers in the crockpot using a recipe from The Vegetarian Slowcooker, although I once made them in the oven several years ago and didn't like them I was pleasantly surprised this time. I like these alot. The stuffing is basically brown rice, salsa, minced onion, and red beans with salt and pepper. I cooked the red beans in the crockpot to (way easy!) and was impressed with how easy this was and how the flavor improved when onion, garlic, and a bay leaf was added during the cooking process. Although the recipe adds a sauce made from canned tomatoes and seasoned I happened to have some homemade pasta sauce leftover in the freezer that I added some cumin to. I had three large green peppers that fit well in my 4 quart pot and divided the stuffing equally between the three... the stuffing was supposed to make 4 peppers but my three were large and all the stuffing was used for that purpose.

I cut the green pepper to make a " flower so it would spread out in a bowl that would contain all of the stuffing. I spooned extra sauce on the top and sprinkled it with some veg Parmesan sprinkles (Bryanna's homemade stuff using English walnuts). Today's lunch is a bowl of this. I attempted using the laptop lunchbox to carry this, but it just isn't made for this style of feast... back to the Tupperware. I added a chocolate soy protein bar to complete this meal.

Next I present pictures of my last couple of days lunch that did fit in the little box. I had another lunchtime meetings (the one that I starved at last time, but it is the day I also ordered my lunchbox) and received many compliments on the box as well as the "really healthy food".... I don't like to be set apart as though my food is somehow "different", I think my food should be the standard against what all food should be compared to. I think comments should be made about when other people choose the dead, preservative packed, etc, etc... like somehow IT stands out and needs to be mentioned. Anyways, I smiled and said it is tastey when the comments were made.

Wrap containing leftover dahl with sprouts, a small plastic "roll" of my zucchini relish (blue ribbon county fair stuff) to add to my wrap, and Dreena's Curried chickpea with sweet potato she calls it a casserole (made in my crockpot) but I think it is more of a hearty stew - I liked it.

Then I have a pumpkin seeded lentil burger (Dreena recipe) with a side container of homemade rhubarb chutney, a salad with more pumpkin seeds and currants, soy yogurt, two dark chocolate pieces, and a wrap all folded up and ready to be used for the burger with some salad. However, when lunchtime came I actually didn't feel like making a wrap using my pretty burger so I folded the chocolate inside the wrap and ate it dipped in my stevia sweetened soy yogurt.... not quite what I had intended but a nice change non the less.

The weekend will soon be approaching, my New York sis will be flying in again to share my "detox" stew as she calls it .... the clam style chowder from Bryanna's 20 minute cookbook. I have some seitan steaks cooking in my slow cooker right from Bryanna's latest Vegan Feast Newsletter. I'll be sharing this sometime this weekend. Have a great one too!

Lunchboxes (bigger pictures)

2007-01-22T05:27:00.000-06:00

For Erica. "My what big food pictures I have." :)

Some lunch boxes from last week.
Brown seasoned rice, pineapple / mango mix, salad sprouts, onion curry relish in the lil' red container(link to recipe), and What a Dahl (slow cooker recipe).

A sandwich on homemade bread maker machine bread with sprouts currants and soy cream cheese spread, Dreena's earthy lentil stew, apples with currants (home canned from our apple tree) and stevia sweetened plain soy yogurt with a saran wrap plastic cover.

To answer Midwest Vegan's question from my previous blog entry I noticed last week that sometimes my salad juices would leak in side the box a little because only one container has a lid. I'm still loving it anyway, I just put a little plastic over some things now but not everything needs this (like the sandwich) because the food stays in place even while carrying it strapped to your shoulder.

I liked this one a lot. 3 small Dreena pumpkin seed coated lentil patties (home made rhubarb chutney in the small red container), romaine salad with a few extra pumpkin seeds and craisins, Sweet potato mashed with cinnamon and stevia, and 2 squared dark vegan chocolate (yum!).

I now have a coffee pot at my desk at work that I keep hot water in. A cup of hot herbal tea after my yummy munches is a wonderful treat.

A Lunchbox , Dahl

2007-01-18T08:13:00.000-06:00

I made "What A Dahl" in Fresh from the Vegetarian Slowcooker by Robin Robertson. I ate this over basmati rice, however the rest of the family is not yet accustomed to the curry flavor. Over time they may adjust, but after the two bite rule (no pressure to do so needed) applied no one but me continued to eat it.

picture Indian Spice Mix:
I added the spices called for in this Dahl recipe to a small bowl before adding it to the crockpot. It was so pretty I couldn't miss taking a picture.

Lunchbox #2:
Mexi Calzone (oatmeal bread dough with vegan chorizo inside) and a chili seasoned sauce for which to dip it in, home canned sugar free apple pie filling, homegrown green beans mixed with cooked red beans and mushrooms.

My Growing Want List ...
I want one of these (twinkie baking set)! This is way to have fun even if it ends up being one Saturday's entertainment (okay $15 for a couple of hours of fun and a lifetime of memories - pretty cheap entertainment if you ask me). Perhaps this will be my treat with the first paycheck, I think I am going to check out the B&B at the mall on Saturday and if I can't find it I'll buy it from the link above. I am not a twinkie fan so much but would do it for a smile from one of my kids, however the corndogs made by Schmoo's mom would make me get this pan for myself.

On a more serious note ...
I want one of these (link to site about adopting older children) too. Although I love the age my kids are and the freedoms I am experiencing, sometimes I wish I could have a few more around to extend my ability to make simple treats and get looks and admiration like I am the best person in the world. I'd love to know if anyone has ever considered such a thing.

TRASH and Exercise (all in the same entry)

2007-01-16T05:01:00.000-06:00

It's a cold out! Time for some soup and Texas Trash (thanks so much ATxVegn) The family LOVED it!. Here's the recipe as posted in the original blog entry. I used whole wheat pretzel rods instead of the tortilla chips, air popped popcorn, with pecans and almond slices instead of mixed peanuts. Matthew was pulling out the pretzel rods to eat and I asked if he liked those the best, he said no that he liked the pecans best which he already picked out.

Texas Trash

4 c. tortilla chips

3 c. Crispix

1 bag microwave plain popcorn, popped

1 can (12 oz.) mixed nuts

1/2 c. corn syrup

1/2 c. margarine

1/2 c. brown sugar

1 T. chili powder

1/4 t. cinnamon

1/4 t. cayenne

Heat oven to 250. Combine chips, cereal, popcorn, and nuts in a large roasting pan.
Combine corn syrup, margarine, sugar, and spices in a small saucepan; heat to boiling, then pour over cereal mixture. Stir to coat. Bake one hour, stirring every 20 minutes. Cool on waxed paper. Keeps in an airtight container for two weeks.

I asked Dave what soup he liked the best expecting him to say chili. He said broccoli cheese which was news to me. This soup is my own. I was aiming for a comforting cheesy like texture, the family liked it well enough but I am curious if anyone else tries this how they might adjust the spices and seasoning.

DORI'S GOLDEN CAULIFLOWER SOUP
(link to recipe)

Several years when I first started using a grain mill I started milling my own legumes for quick cooking easy soups. I liked the way white beans thickened the soup and gave body similar to heavy cream dairy soups. This soup recipe is similar to what I used to make with white bean flour, but I decided to try it with besan (chickpea flour) and split red lentils.... the color was spectacular with these choices and add great nutrition that is easier to digest that the freshly milled white bean flour. Although this would not end up on my top five list it was comforting and well liked by everyone else in the family.

MY VERY FIRST LUNCHBOX
Black bean soup, cooked and cut up sweet potato, cabbage sprout craisin apple salad, and pineapple. I was so excited I have actually put forward a good effort of thought into my next lunch box to and making food that would look nice in this.

Using my sprouts salad with broiled seasoned tofu, apple slices, radish, and carrot shreds on a bed of romaine lettuce.

LAST NOTE:

HI SIS!
My oldest sister has been checking out my blog. I think she is interested in healthier eating because she bought a sweet potato and a variety of fresh fruits (she told me this, why would she tell me this and ask for my blog address within a 24 hour period) .... for her this is an accomplishment because she lives in a hotel for weeks at a time coming home for a weekend a month. Also, the water aerobics is to start on the 15th (Monday), but now that I accepted the extra work after school Monday is one of the days I work so I would not be home in time (drats!). I have purchased a few fitness tools below though so that I can meet some personal fitness goals, they are three Pilates workouts from Amazon. Pasta Queen influenced my decision. I had a Pilates workout video several years ago when I was a beginner and the video wasn't ummm, try I may and try I might but me body only got mean (not lean). It is also 13-17 degrees here during the warmest part of the day, so I'm not to disappointed not to be able to do water aerobics other than the fact I wanted to have time with the friend.

1 "Pilates - Beginning Mat Workout"
Ana Caban; DVD; $12.99

1 "10 Minute Solution: Pilates"
Lara Hudson; DVD; $10.99

1 "10 Minute Solution: Rapid Results Pilates"
Lara Hudson; DVD; $7.47

Finished.

Weight Loss and Lunch

2007-01-14T06:25:00.000-06:00

HALF OF ME BLOG

Check out the entry from the link, a great
testimony of what diet and exercise can do.

I was browsing around on some other sites, checking out other blog links. Although I really wasn't looking for anything special I did find a humorous blog that mentioned certain words in her post just to up the site meter count, unfortunately she joked that it was only perverted teen boys who would probably look. However she did discuss healthy food and weight loss and mentioned Pasta Queen who has lost a lot of weight. I checked out Pasta Queen and am pretty impressed with her computer skills. Her pictures turn when you click them and one picture shows her at a very obese weight and then today, she also has an overlay of a 10 pound weight loss - you can really see the difference!

I am so excited that my lunchbox came in. I have been browsing the pages reading about how much our disposable lunch packaging costs the environment. I love the little sauce dipper and silverware - FUN! There is even a tag on the front in which I can write my name. I can't wait to begin using it.

I now have the perfect reason to pack my lunch. I will be working extra hours in a unique opportunity to act as a "home school mom" (what I call it) for a student who needs the service for the rest of this tri-mester, it is in addition to my current work and is paid separately. My role will happen in a public library although the situation is very complex unlike my mention of it here, I am very happy that this is an option that the school/ parent could opt for.

Also concerning school, Matthew just finished his first semester in a college computer class (CISCO I). He is really a high school senior, but is earning these credits through a post secondary enrollment option. He made it through with a 72%, 70% is passing. As a previous homeschool student he needed to learn some study skills, which he did under pressure of finals week. When asked what he would do differently next semester he said he would take better notes and actually study from them. He'll be taking CISCO II next... he has Monday and Tuesday off so you'll probably see some more great cooking from him.

He is thinking of Bryanna's 20 minute seashell casserole with a salad. I think is also time to make a seitan roast and to make some good European bread. I'm going to have to pull out my crockpot again also, because three days a week I won't get home until 6 pm and will desire to have supper ready to eat. I'm also getting hungry for some of the basics, like red beans and rice or a simple black bean stew over a sweet potato. It is super cold as of yesterday, below zero kind of cold which is normal for us. We finally got our fist snow and it is expected to snow 3-6" tonight which is also normal. It is not normal that we have had autumn kind of weather up to now. Besides lots of warm herbal teas and hot cocoas here is some of the food we have been eating...

Dreena's Vive Le Vegan Stork Muffins, DD made these as her breakfast recipe of choice. The muffin portion was not very sweet, but when you get the pieces of the chopped date and cranberries - delish! Made with oat flour, ww pastry, and barley flour. I am a little bit of a stevia fan, so I would add just a tad bit of that to these muffins for the family's sweet tooth. DD says the coconut in them make it hard to eat with her braces.

I love Dreena's hummus and have had some on hand for several weeks now. This was a "salad" plate I made before a meal this week - - - yum! I cooked up about 3 lbs of chickpeas not long ago and froze them in 2 cup quantities as well as made two batches of hummus so that I could pull it out and use it as needed. I could have canned the chickpeas, but will wait a bit longer.... I really need to stock up on my home canned soups again. I miss having it ready to grab and go.

Yesterday when I was in a hurry for something quick I made this dish of Pasta and Greens over Mueller's multigrain pasta. The recipe came from Bryanna's 20 Minutes to Dinner cookbook. My picture doesn't give this recipe much glory, but I really loved the flavor. I ended up mixing the turnip green and beans topping which offered a strong flavor in with the spaghetti. I served a side of cooked cauliflower to go with it. The veggies were from my garden, both came from the freezer.

Here is a little review I found on the Internet (here) about the pasta ...."a box of Mueller's Multigrain Pasta, an 80 percent whole-grain pasta that cooked up chewy and dense like a great semolina pasta. The flavor was surprisingly full but not distracting or overpowering. I suspect the reason this pasta is more tasty than other whole-grain pastas is that it's made from a mix of rice, oats and wheat. The pasta is made by the American Italian Pasta Company. The pastas come in penne, rotini and spaghetti shapes."

DH's birthday is the 14th (today). I made him flaming breakfast muffins (they are Dreena's carob chip made with 100% barley flour) frosted and complete with candles, fresh sweetened hot soymilk and oranges.

Have a good week!

Detox with some soup?

2007-01-09T15:27:00.000-06:00

The picture is of a no-clam chowder soup that we have had recently. More about this below, But first I want to share with you some info that I found on Vegan Grandma 's blog. She has some great information on her blog about the latest GREAT AMERICAN DETOX DIET. Here is my overview of her suggested detox dietary guidelines:

No!
Sugar, Refined carbohydrates (white bread, white sugar, white rice), Coffee, Caffeine, Alcohol, Dairy, Meat, and avoid using peanut oil, canola oil, corn oil. I think I could do this except for the words in red.... that's a bit restrictive for me. I don't needs me some coffee, but I sure do like it a whole lot.

Yes!
10 to 14 glasses of filtered water a day, Whole grains: brown rice, millet, quinoa, oats, Nuts and seeds, Phytochemical rich -foods: blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, watermelon, peaches, plums, sea veggies, cabbage, tomatoes, Soy products, Beans and legumes, Acidophilus to replenish good bacteria in the intestines, use mainly extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, and sesame oil , focus on organic fresh foods

"The best way to ensure that your body is getting the kinds of carbs it needs to run smoothly and stay "clean" is to keep eating whole grains, beans, vegetables, and fruits that give you the extra dose of fiber needed to clean out your system. The natural foods with the highest amounts of fiber are lentils; black, kidney, and lima beans; chick peas; potatoes with the skin; peas; non-instant oatmeal; pears and apples with the skin; Brussels sprouts; and peaches."-p. 117

Here's some of our latest foods:
Chinese Hot and Sour Soup
I have been inspired by Bryanna's 20 Minutes to Dinner Cookbook. I am doing alot of cooking from this book lately. I have changed this into my version inspired by the original recipe on page 69 of the cookbook.

Instructions:
Place all ingredients except the cornstarch/ water mix into a medium pot. Bring to a boil, then turn down a simmer for about 5-10 minutes. Add the dissolved cornstarch and bring to a boil, stirring until it has thickened slightly and is clear. Serve immediately. NOTE: I have done this in the crock pot also. I just add the cornstarch at the end and turn the pot to high for 15 or so minutes.
4 C veg broth
6 oz firm tofu cut into strips
1/2 C sauerkraut
3/4 C frozen peas
1/2 C fresh sliced mushrooms (or an 8 oz can drained)
3-5 thin sliced shiitake mushrooms (I just throw them in straight form the package, but you an grind them into a powder or chop them up a bit)
1/2 C thinly sliced onion (or green onions)
2 slices fresh ginger root chopped (about 1 - 1 1/2 Tbsp)
2 Tbsp dry sherry
2 Tbsp soy sauce or tamari
1 Tbsp rice vinegar
1/2 tsp liquid hot pepper or 1-3 tsp of a chili garlic sauce, you choose level of hotness
1 Tbsp cornstarch dissolved in 1 Tbsp cold water
Thin strips of carrots (I used a veg peeler and 1/2 a medium carrot).

The picture above is a soup from the same cookbook. DH was hankering some clam chowder to eat with those cheap little white flour round crackers. This soup was satisfying to him, Bryanna 20 minute cookbook calls it New England-Style Sea Vegetable Chowder. The original recipe on page 62 calls for silken tofu, which makes a wonderfully creamy and thick soup, but I decided to make mine with soy milk and it was good. Here is my recipe.

Dori's No-Clam Chowder
1 large onion chopped
3 medium Yukon gold potatoes cubed (I leave the skin on)
8 oz mushrooms chopped coarsely
1 cup frozen corn kernels
2 Tbsp dulse flakes (I use less than Bryanna calls for, we are not fond of this flavor when it is strong because it is a bit fishy for us)
3/4 cup minced celery
1 Tbsp soy bacon bits
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp kelp powder
ground veggie pepper to taste
2 cubes Knorr vegetable bouillon, this brand has cubes that are equal to 2 cups of broth each when added to water
6 cups fresh soy milk made in the soy milk maker or 1 quart of plain soy milk combined with 2 cups of water
2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp sugar or alternate
In a medium pot saute onions until soft and add the remaining ingredients. I did this in the crock pot.

Here is a link to my homemade soy milk recipe:
SOY MILK MAKER

Hope you are all having a great week. I have showed my blog to some of my students. I hope you try all the recipes you find here and impress your family. Extra credit if you bring in a small sample of your food and share with the class about your cooking experience.

Sprouts and behind the apron

2007-01-07T21:22:00.000-06:00

FIBER at 28 cooks is having a cook behind the apron "coming out" of sorts. I have never been hidden on this blog as I have shared pictures of myself and family, but to jump in on the fun I am going to participate. I am Dori from the Rural Midwest United States. Although I had been homeschooling my kids (age 15 and 18 with special needs), growing organic veggies on our 1 acre plot, cooking up a storm in our small family organic bakery, and cooking vegan for 8 years I was previously a SAD eating gal who experienced a few serious health problems until I decided to reconsider my lifestyle and values. I have a son who has a diagnosis on the autism scale and other health issues including food allergies. Currently (as in one whole week now) I am a high school teacher with an endorsement in Occupational Family and Consumer Science. Although I am taking a little time off from personal studies I am pursuing my PhD in the same area. The picture is of me from September.

MORE...
Sprouts are good for us also according to THIS website. I purchased a sprouting device not long ago because I like salad / sandwich sprouts and wanted more variety that our midwest winters will allow at an affordable price (aka I wanted more than cabbage). I know that grain and bean sprouts are considered high in nutritional qualities, but I have never really used them much, okay, never used them ever. About two years ago I purchased a bag of bean sprouts from an oriental store. I don't remember what I wanted to use them for, but I do remember that I didn't like them at all and have not been adventurous with bean sprouts since then.

With much talk of detox and commitment for a healthier 2007 and financial goals, etc. I am open again to trying various sprouts ways with these now that I will have the ability to make my own. I do have the sprout lids that would enable me to grow them a canning jar, but decided to try this kit so I can do more kinds of sprouts at once. Why sprout? According to HANDY PANTRY the company that manufactured the kit that I purchased here are the top 10 reasons to sprout...
1. Only Pennies Per Serving
One tablespoon of seeds will fill a quart jar with several ounces of sprouts. A 4-ounce package will yield several pounds.
2. Simple and Easy
Take less than a minute per day to grow and prepare. They will grow nearly anywhere indoors, in any season. Sprouts require very little space and travel well.
3. Fresh and Ready Quickly
This “garden in your kitchen” grows very fast, in any kind of weather. No digging, planting, weeding, pests or chemicals involved. And there’s no long wait, as in seasonal outdoor gardens. Just 3 to 7 days to a bountiful, nutrition-packed harvest. When stored in your refrigerator, they will stay fresh for days- even weeks if rinsed properly.
...
7. Highly Nutritious
Several contain more protein than cooked meat-at a tiny fraction of the cost. The presence and balance of amino acids makes this protein more digestible. All sprouts are rich in vitamins, minerals, trace elements, enzymes, and fiber.
8. Low in Calories / Fat
One fully-packed cup of alfalfa sprouts contains only 16 calories. These are simple sugars for quick energy. Sprouts contain no cholesterol and provide several essential fatty acids. Sprouts are the perfect weight-loss and body-purification food.
9. Help Detox your Body
Chlorophyll helps cleanse and oxygenate the blood. Enzymes aid in the digestion and assimilation of nutrients, and contribute to the body’s life force. Fiber aids elimination and their lecithin helps the body get rid of cholesterol. A raw food diet is one of the best ways to detox your body.
10. Build your Immune System
Antioxidants protect you from radiation and toxic chemicals. They help the body to cleanse, detox, rebuild and heal itself. Sprouts are rich in antioxidants and help protect you from the health scourge of the 90’s— toxic build-up. Antioxidant enzymes are especially important, because they are essential for the proper function of the immune system. Sprouts are one of the best sources for these important nutrients.

Okay I'm convinced. You'll be seeing more sprouts on my food soon. I am seriously giving deep thoughts to 6-8 weeks of a detox diet. However I must do more study... I might actually "jump on the wagon" in March during spring break.

What's for lunch?

2007-01-06T08:48:00.000-06:00

I have now been working at my new job for one week - woohoo! :) I love what I am doing but I don't love the once a month paycheck - mostly the fact that I must wait a month for it. So far I have carried a bag of popcorn and a piece of fruit for lunch until I find the right routine for me. One day I attended a meeting that took up all of my lunch time which I did not know it would do and then had to go right onto doing something else, I was starved at the end of the day. That evening when I got home I went online shopping (oh no!) and guess what I bought. GUESS and then click HERE for a link to it. I've been wanting one for some time and now feel that it is the right time to splurge as a new job "congrats", I am sure I will get a good many years of use from it.

My teens were still on a holiday break on Tuesday (but DH and I had to be gone), so I had my daughter make supper. She chose Dreena's Three- bean curry tomato soup which happens to look similar to the recipe curried tomato three bean stew link I found in a general search. I also found a Taste of Home internet article about Dreena's food, this article is an interesting read as the writer discusses "slimming" after holiday comfort foods. The soup DD made yielded a big pot, I was a little disappointed that evening though because it lacked favor. The next day I had it again and a little sitting time helped because I could taste the curry then, but added a touch of lemon juice and little salt. I made a note in my cookbook that the next time I make this to use all vegetable bouillon instead of a partial broth / water combination. I use the bouillon cubes anyway so it would be just a matter of adding more.

I have been eating this soup with Stacy's Pesto and Sundried Tomato flavored pita chips which also happened to be on sale this month. I ended up with 6 bags of those and the simply naked kind. I wish they could be whole grain, but I knew I was getting a good deal of fiber and nutrients in the soup I paired them with.

At my monthly buying club Tofurky slices were on sale and up for auction so I ordered some to try for the first time. They are a bit higher in fat than I would prefer, but I am positive that the rest of the family will devour these and right now the little extra convenience is nice. My first use with these were in a sandwich which I unfortunately drowned with strong flavored garlicy hummous and lettuce on a bun, the sandwich was overall good but this was because I liked the strong flavored hummous. I know I could have made my own seitan roast, sliced it and been well fed for at least eight abundant portions for half the cost of a package that had three smallish servings.

In DH and my insane plan to ensure that our children have the skills to survive "in the real world" cooking requirements are back in force in this New Year. Both of our teens are required to choose two recipes a week to share and one must be for supper. DD chose Dreena's squirrely scones from VLV. I searched for other information about these on the Internet and found one picture and reference to them on Squirrel's blog (isn't that funny!). The picture to the right has been copied from her site.

DD's scones were very tasty, but did not spread at all. This is not a bad thing, these will be made again for sure sometimes because the four of us scarfed down a whole batch in one breakfast sitting. In comparison with the picture above our were "lumpy" in that the the batter did not smooth out and with all of the nuts and fruits packed into them. I think that the flour in my area has a tendency to be "drier" because I notice in general that if I follow recipes from cookbook authors in Canada I get a drier result. My results may be affected by the fact that I purchase oat flour, I do not make it with quick oats therefore I may be getting more grain than the fluffier chopped oatmeal version.

I hope the first week of the New Year has been as good as you have resolution-ed it to be ... or better now that the resolutions have been broken and you can get on with "normal" life. I have made a connection with a friend who has a weight loss goal. We will be joining our town's new wellness center and signing up for water aerobics classes to take together. I never imagined how bored I would feel so quickly now that I do not have a ton of writing or school work to do when I come home. I am already concocting various other "big" projects in my mind.

Food for life....

2007-01-02T15:04:00.000-06:00

CHECK OUT THIS HEALTHY WINE LINK

Since I got some for Christmas and was sharing with friends I just had to do a search to find out the best way to enjoy it. My exploration of wine allowed me to find out....
1) A person does not drink wine to get drunk.
2) Usually wine is most remembered by a special event and the people it was celebrated with.
3) It's okay if a person says I do not like red wine or any other for that matter, no need to convince them otherwise. I don't like most wines either, but the fruit wine we bought is pretty tasty.

2007 is here.

Empty Red Raspberry Wine and Blushing Pink
Champagne bottles complete with empty glasses.

Bringing in the new year, we anticipated the event with two neighboring families whom we played Yahtzee (I won) and Clue (I accused and lost early in the game). One neighbor couple brought their three children so they watched the movies THE INCREDIBLES and SPY KIDS. About 9:30 pm we opened and shared the fruit wine between the 6 of us and then at midnight we popped open the bottle of bubbly. I had Dreena's Mushroom and Wild Rice soup in the crockpot to munch on through the evening. One neighbor brought some organic blue corn chip along with a cheesy salsa (non vegan) combination and the another brought chocolate pretzels, probably not vegan.

RESOLUTIONS ...
To begin the year I have a few personal growth goals as well as a few family financial goals.

#1) Personal goals: DH and I are at a time in our life when we transition into me going back to work after leaving the workforce to be a homeschool mom for seven years. I used to be a social worker before going pro mom, but over the last couple of years I returned to school to prepare myself for the transition of children beginning to grow up and out. Of course I will be going into a food and family related work now with my family and consumer science degree and teaching certification, but for personal satisfaction and enjoyment I blog. Thank you for an enjoyable 2006 and I look forward to inspiring and being inspired by fellow bloggers out there whom I might otherwise not have the opportunity to meet.

#2) Food goals:
Okay over the past month we have went all out on sugar and wheat in our house. My clothes still fit, but I feel the sluggishness of what I have done to myself. I'll offer some recipes and thoughts about this below. I'd love to understand more about cleansing or fasting ... tips and links welcome.

A LITTLE HISTORY ...
Concerning goal #1: I left the paid workforce seven years ago when I discovered a I had a son with special needs... actually, several of them... Asperger's syndrome, ADD w/o hyperactivity, social anxiety disorder, asthma, food allergies, and hypoglycemia. For us we realized that there came a time in life that QUALITY of life was more important than staying in the mainstream system where our evenings and weekends were set by assignments given at school which in actuality had nothing to offer his life after this "education". This journey lead me into exploring food "cures" and I learned a great many things. Unfortunately food has not been the "cure" but our whole family has benefited as we changed our diet and lifestyle into an organic, back-to-nature with home grown produce, whole grain, vegan, etc and still learning. My son is improving and he is able to attend a college level computer networking and technology program in "the big city" living the week away from home and returning on weekends. He still has some issues, but they are more manageable and we have found that food does have a very important role but is not the only factor.

Food has been good to us. As a family we started the small whole organic grain bakehouse and worked it for the past five years. It was not the sole source of our income as DH works elsewhere but managed all aspects of our business, my job was to learn to live on his one income, and together we worked baking, selling, growing, living, etc. A couple of years ago we were to the point that we either needed to hire employees (and start a small factory) or reduce and stay a specialized mom and pop business that we could enjoy. We decided to down size and continue to do only what we enjoyed. Now that my children are growing up I intend to take my knowledge of food and business into the public sector to help students and later families with my experience and area of knowledge. This is the year for this to begin and today I look forward in anticipation.

TO MEET GOAL #2: BREAKFAST
OATMEAL WITH FRESH CHOPPED APPLES and cinnamon

I use 1/2 cup rolled oats (not quick), 1/2 cup water, 1 cup water, and a sprinkle of cinnamon sweetened with KAL stevia extract powder to taste. I microwave the dish for two minutes on high (watch to make sure it doesn't bubble over and leave it sit for 2-3 minutes while I prepare coffee and make a sweet tofu yogurt sauce to eat on top of my dish. This is a wonderful weight watchers core recipe and with lite silken tofu and a little xanthan gum you can make an incredible VERY low calorie, satisfying drink. ( LINK TO 1 point: MOCHA SMOOTHIE and more oatmeal recipes) You may think to yourself that you ate an very big meal, but if you are a ww point keeper the total meal is only 3 points.... of course you will be hungry for a snack later, think of how few calories your just ate. Want to make it a few more points to make it to lunch add 4 - 6 English walnuts or almonds. Maybe a square of my favorite dark chocolate will be satisfying also... this will only add a point or two (depends what kind you use).

NEW YEARS DAY WAFFLES AND OUR FAMILY TRADITION:
LINK TO WAFFLE RECIPE also includes another smoothie recipe

Every new years DH and I are up on New Years Day preparing healthy waffles (which happens to also be a ww core item), Bryanna's TVP S'SAGE patties, and strawberries (which we use as syrup). I buy some sweetened strawberries and some whole without sugar and sweeten them myself with stevia. I melt a little of my homemade sugar free chocolate syrup for the top and also use my homemade soy yogurt, however one of my family members brought their own organic dairy yogurt.

The best thing about this day is that I have the time make up a bunch more. I multiply the recipe by 4 and make up a bunch ahead to freeze. The pile of waffles in the picture are actually leftover after feeding 9 people. They are also ww core or 1 ww point (i believe) and in general plain healthy and full of fiber. They are not your typical light and fluffy buttermilk stuff, but they are light enough very tastey. I do sweeten my batter with a touch of KAL stevia extract powder and have left the sugar completely out of it.

FROM DECEMBER BAKING ...
I know that the holidays has probably got most of us thinking about less food or more veggies due to all the rich treats we ate over the past month. However, I want to add that I do enjoy baking and I rarely ever buy snacks, because of it. After that introduction I present (with anticipation of the next cookbook) more baking...

Drumroll for Dreena ...
Here I share a couple of cookie pictures for her upcoming book that I had the opportunity to test in December and they were wonderful.
CHOCOLATE MINT MELTAWAYS

JAM-PRINT COOKIES
She says the new book will be out in Fall 2007. I'll be waiting... I have really enjoyed cooking from the two books she currently has out.

The following muffins come from the book Vive Le Vegan
Orange Poppy Seed Muffins. They are made from 1 1/4 C oat flour and 1 cup barley. Weight watchers fans will like that these flours are CORE foods, although they do contain a minimal amount of oil I think this could be subbed easily. This muffin batter started rising immediately in my mixing bowl, so I really heaped it in the muffin cup. .... obviously a good thing I did because they did not rise much in the oven. I have discovered several of Dreena's muffins have this "poofy" nature. These muffins made a pretty presentation and the oat flour gave them a somewhat nutty flavor, they were filling also and had that "stick with you" quality. If I personalized this recipe I would do away with the syrups and use stevia, maybe add some real oranges so that the orange pulp would be included .... however you know this is the season for cranberries. Family rating: C-, they didn't care for the lack of flavor but texture was good as long as you had a drink to sip on with it. I guess I am not as picky with foods... I liked the ingredients in it and went to the work of making them so of course I ate them. I did add fresh cranberry relish to the top in place of jelly foer added flavor and I had to freeze them until I could get through them since I am the only one who ate on these.

Oriental Buffet and Cranberries

2006-12-30T22:01:00.000-06:00

Snowball says, "HAPPY NEW YEAR!"

She has been enjoying laying in every possible position around our home to attract my attention. Whenever I look at her it is as if she is trying to say, "Wow - me and this food are a perfect match!" or "If you think you need this box, you'll have to pet me to get to it." I have picked up ribbon several times that she has stretched across the floor. Unfortunately, I have previously picked up a few broken ornaments, she has yet to understand that the shiny glass ones break.

SATURDAY NIGHT my sister came back from New York. We had an oriental meal at my house for "Christmas" since she had to be away working when the rest of the world was celebrating otherwise. I indulged myself in the kitchen (which I really did enjoy) to make the following feast. It was supposed to be a potluck, but only candy or snacky type foods were offered. Even though my family is the only animal free people there, no one else seemed to care that meat was not the main course or any part of it for that matter. No one complained. The salad rolls and miso soup brought the most compliments! We truly had a vegan buffet ...

Here's what I served ...
My camera lens got steamed on, so it's a little blurry. Oriental Pasta Salad, vegan coconut macaroons with a dollop of chocolate frosting and an almond slice sticking out of it, dates, burnt french peanuts, vegetarian sushi rolls sprinkled with sesame seeds (click the link to an awesome veg sushi demo), homemade "sushi" pickles (from this summer's cucumber harvest), a crock full of miso soup (click on the link for the recipe, scroll to the end of the post), a bowl of sliced oranges (not pictured), ginger soda (occasionally this is nice for a treat), tamari sauce, rice vinegar and seasoned rice vinegar ....

Thai basil salad rolls and peanut dipping sauce with extra salad because I noticed this meal was lacking in veggies (unusual for an oriental meal usually full of stir fries). I have made these before using mangoes (link above). This time I used pear and sprinkled on 1/2 tsp dried basil since I had no fresh.

To the right is a close up of the macaroons. I got the idea from Fiber at 28 cooks, but exchanged the condensed sweet milk and egg whites for 4 ounces lite mori-nu silken tofu, 1/4 tsp KAL stevia extract powder, and 1/2 Tbsp Energ-g egg replacer with 1/4 cup water.

The noodle salad is one of my favorites. This one is made with multi-grain spiral noodles. I had a class make this recipe not long ago, click the link if you would like to see the picture of it.... it was with rye noodles which made the salad a little darker in color. I like the "lighter-ness" of the multi-grained noodles. This recipe is in Bryanna Fiber for life cookbook. It is also alot like the recipe for BRYANNA’S ASPARAGUS-NOODLE SALAD WITH SESAME scroll down for original recipe that is listed on her free archives. Here is the dressing recipe that I put on a 16 oz box of noodles, 1 lb broccoli (steamed) with 1 cup purple onion, 1/2 C red pepper diced, and 12 oz firm regular tofu marinaded and baked for flavor after being cut into small wedges:

DRESSING:

7 T. soy sauce

1/4 c. toasted sesame oil

3 and 1/2 T. dark unbleached sugar

3 T. balsamic vinegar

3 T. water

1 T. grated fresh ginger

2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. chili garlic paste

1-2 cloves garlic, crushed

After making the brown rice sushi rolls I turned the leftover ingredients into a salad and added some currants. Here is a combination of the sushi pickles, leftover pickle juice (alot like seasoned rice vinegar), carrots, red pepper, pear diced, salt and pepper to taste along with a few seaweed pieces (the broken pieces of the sushi rolls I made). I don't have a previous link about these pickles, but I did find my canned onion curry relish which would also make a good rice salad flavoring too, check it out if you like.

I actually have to confess on the brown rice, it came from a jar. When I operate the 23 quart pressure canner to can a batch of stuff I like to make sure I have a maximum # of jars in there since it takes more than two hours. To fill up jars I can pints of brown rice, it turns out sticky and unappealing to serve alone, but when broken up it can make a base for other ingredients and that is what I did with this salad. It was a nice "change of pace" kind of meal.

The "sushi pickles" (pictured above) a pickle that uses cucumbers, onions, carrots, and slices of fresh ginger root. They are nice to eat alone or to include along side of homemade dished like this. The recipe came from SUMMER IN A JAR by Andrea Chesman. I love the variety and the fact that the recipes are written to prepare the canned goods by the quart or pint. They really do remind me of the little pick ginger slices at a sushi bar.

MORE ON CRANBERRIES . . .
I did some canning. Cranberries are around in abundance right now for a little while longer - I bought 12 bags not long ago. I froze some whole for smoothies, this chutney recipe and jellies can also be made with the frozen berries. Although my tradition is cranberry relish for which I make, freeze, and thaw already prepared the chutney is a recipe that I have been meaning to try for some time and finally got around to it this year. Other than tasting some that would not fit into a jar (despite the little bit of cayenne pepper, it is not spicy at all), I cannot say that this has rated at the tradition level yet, but I will be looking into ways to use it soon. I made 12 pints, gave 7 and have 5 pints left... suggestions welcome.

CRANBERRY CHUTNEY (6 pints)
I originally photocopied this recipe from a book I checked out from the library called HOMEMADE, sorry but that is all I wrote about it. I changed the recipe to make it sugar free (stevia sweet) and added the lemon juice to offset the stevia flavor.
Chop in the following in a food processor to the size a little larger than rice:
1 large green apple
6 cups cranberries (fresh or frozen)
1 C red onion
1/2 C celery
1 1 /2 Tbsp minced garlic
..... (recipe said 2 1/2 cups light brown sugar) .......
I used 2 tsp KAL stevia extract powder and 1 cup applesauce with 2 Tbsp lemon juice
3/4 cup dry red wine
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
Combine in a medium sauce pan, bring to a boil over medium heat, turn heat down and simmer for 30 minutes or until mixture is thick and flavors are blended. Remove from heat and pack into sterilized jars and process for 15 minutes.

USES for chutney in general (not vegan but can give some good ideas)

Sweet and sour cranberry recipe from an oriental site

ABOUT WINE
Check out this interesting site!
DRINK SOME WINE

I am a thief (second attempt with pictures) .....

2006-12-28T13:13:00.000-06:00

I'll try this again and hopes that blogger doesn't "thief" my pictures. In order to do this I deleted the last blog page which also deleted comments. If you left a comment there I did see it, but it is gone now.

Hi! Christmas has been and I am glad. It is worth the fuss.

I have a confession to make. This Christmas I received numerous gifts including the three cookbooks you see me pictured here with (I dig my Christmas moose overalls). No, I did not steal the cookbooks - they were gifts, but I did borrow the following ideas and have no intentions of returning them...

#1 Gaia's Chickpea Roll
I first thought it would be a bit fishy. It had a mild sea vegetableflavor and although I haven't cared for this before... it was very mild and I enjoyed this recipe.

Loved the crispy outside and filling innards. I served this with a wonderful vegetable filled tomatoey stew called Manhattan chowder from Bryanna's 20 minutes to dinner cookbook (p. 63).

#2 Martha Stewarts Graham Cracker houses
Melissa's awesome church (took 7 hours) and Matthew's colorful double wide trailer (took 1 hour 15 minutes). Sunspire "m&m's" make a pretty decoration that got picked off and eaten. The Christmas tree's surrounding the cathedral (deformed gumdrops painted with a permanent marker and held together with a cinnamon stick) could not be eaten.

Sorry Martha this one was fun and we're keeping it.

#3 Dreena's Carob Chip Muffins (vlv p 34)
These are made from 100% barley flour. I was absolutely amazed!!! When I first read the recipe I really thought that "moist texture" meant gummy aka unpleasant. I made them as the recipe stated, which the family really liked. But then, I must play .... I made a few changes. I omitted the sugar and syrup and all but one tablespoon of the oil, I added 3/4 tsp KAL stevia extract powder, 1/2 cup unsweet applesauce, and 1/3 cup mini bittersweet vegan chips with 1/3 cup craisins in place of the omissions. WOW! They made an awesome muffin! The "moist texture" only refers to the fact that they are not dry and falling apart ... not the gummy, squishy or otherwise "tender" I have come to find most alternative bakers describe as "moist". This one was a real treat. In place of the chips and craisins I am going to try them with about 1 cup of my favorite raw cranberry relish (in place of applesauce and the extra for flavor) next time.

Okay I confessed and now that this is out of the way
I will go on to share with you some of my gifts...

I have desired to try some wine for several years now and have wanted to visit a "homegrown" style winery for along time. I finally got the chance to and Dave bought me two bottles... although I had several to choose from I picked out the Crimson Cranberry and Red Raspberry flavors. The sales gal told me to try the red raspberry in hot cocoa - I will. Would love some other suggestion for how to use these, other than dry wines for cooking I have never been much of a drinker. I do know that these wines are very sweet.

I'm going to save these to open on Saturday night when my sis comes home from New York again. She along with my aunt and uncle, a couple of cousins, mom and niece will be having an oriental style buffet at my house. I look forward to sharing the food we make for this soon. I also got a nice gift certificate to amazon.com ... I'll be checking other blogs to find out what cookbooks others are enjoying this year before I decide.

Also in the picture I got a tin of Zhena's GYPSY LOVE tea, Mr Artsey key chain, two vegan dark chocolate candy bars, a stone nativity candle holder, a CD called HUGS for the holiday that plays nice instrumental music, and a sterling silver cross necklace. The tea is tasty and the music is relaxing.

CRAFTY REPORT . . .
This is Matthew... remember him? :)

He has been into the renaissance time period and desired a walking stick for his costume. Dave cut one out of oak, I wood burned Matt's name and his favorite bible verse on it, stained it and decorated it for a gift for Mathew. He thinks it is pretty neat.

Now he will go back to the fare in style, although he still hopes to get those ridiculously priced boots ... not this gift time.

And a recipe to share from my breakfast table to yours (restitution of a sort... for my food crimes above ;o) ...

BIG MAPLE NUT AND CINNAMON RAISIN ROLLS
I like to use my oatmeal bread dough for this recipe. It gives a more tender roll and combines a little soy flour and flax meal to offer more nutrition. My bread dough recipe follows:

Dori's Oatmeal Bread (makes 2 loaves)

I triple this recipe when I make it in my BOSCH Universal kitchen appliance.

2 cups hot tap water
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup maple syrup OR 1/3 cup unrefined sugar
3/4 cup quick oatmeal
3/4 cup freshly milled whole white wheat flour
2 Tbsp SAF instant yeast

Step 1: Mix all in mixer bowl until blended, cover and rest for 15 minutes to proof yeast.

Step 2: Add remaining ingredients while mixing on speed 2 (I have a Bosch compact that has 4 speeds which I use when I make a small batch like this. It is similar to a kitchen aid, but I have never used a kitchen aid).
2 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup soy flour
1/2 tsp ground dried ginger
3 Tbsp flax meal
1 1 /2 C great river milling bread flour (partially refined to remove some bran, but germ is intact)
1 1/2 cup more freshly milled white whole wheat flour

Cover and allow to knead 8 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Divide dough in half. Shape into loaf. Roll into extra oatmeal to coat loaf all over. Place into oiled 8 x 4" bread pan. Rise 20 minutes while covered with an oiled plastic wrap to avoid drying out. When doubled in size place in oven and spray oven sides and bottom with water from a water bottle to create a steam. Bake @ 350 (I have a convection oven, so you may need to bake in a non-convection oven for 30 minutes) for 25 minutes. Remove from pan and place loaves on a wire rack to cool.

To make the rolls, I section the dough into portions.
For maple nut I combine 1/3 cup unrefined sugar with 1/8 tsp maple syrup and 1/4 cup coarsely chopped English walnuts. Roll the bread dough into a rectangle onto a Crisco greased counter with a little crisco'd hands. Spread the sugar mix, roll up and cut into 6 pieces. Lay these into a greased 9" round cake pan. Allow to rise 2o minutes, bake for 20 minutes (I use a convection oven lined with stones on the top and bottom rack). Remove from pan onto a cheap paper plate and cool on a rack.

To frost: Combine 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 - 2 drops maple favoring and a little water to make a nice frosting drizzle (not to much, it is better to add more water after creating a to dry "drizzle", but you can always add more sugar if needed to get the consistency right.

For cinnamon: 1/3 cup unrefined sugar with 1/2 tsp high quality cinnamon

Last picture is of Melissa's ornament cookie. We created the red sugar by adding drops of red food coloring to regular sugar granules and stirring it until we got the desired color.

Goodie bags

2006-12-18T08:22:00.000-06:00

We are quickly approaching the upcoming holiday . . .
Goodie bags for our friends and neighbors, and some family members are a traditional gift from our home. This weekend we finally got them out. I was a little concerned that we would be pressed for time and missed working with the kids to assemble these bags, but I believe this is typical of a family entering the "launching" stage with two teenage children. Our goodie bags are actually brown paper lunch sacks decorated with ribbons to hold various goodies (decorated sacks not pictured), I find a basic bag like this very versatile and potentially festive. Although the gift bags vary in content quantity, the largest bags for a select few included: Bags of 8 mixed variety cookies, chocolate covered plastic spoons to stir hot cocoa with, baggies of hot cocoa, chex mix "puppy chow", (vegan) fudge, banana bread w/ chocolate chips (pictured previously during baking extra #1), chocolate dipped pretzel rods sprinkled with broken candy, and pumpkin granola bars.

Previously as a stay at home mom / home school teacher I had both kids and myself in the kitchen for a couple of days to make goodie bags that we would share with many. I greatly dislike holiday traditions in which kids make long "want lists" and it is all about them with no thought for someone else .... when they have no clue the holidays are about being a blessing to someone else. Our gifts and talent are not given to us to keep all to our self, they are meant to be shared and then they can accomplish the purpose for which they are intended - a satisfying and more peaceful life for all of us. I have tried to teach my kids that one must contribute something to anyplace they go, especially at Christmas time. These contributions can take many forms and is similar to looking for the positive in others, even though some people require that you really search for it.
MORE IDEAS FOR HOMEMADE CHRISTMAS GOODIES
Link#1 - ornaments, scrap book pages, sweet treat packages, etc
Link#2 - More than baked goods, long list of ideas
In our early home school years (when they were younger) on Christmas Day I would give both children a choice of something to contribute to our little family celebration meal. One year Melissa made homemade peanut brittle in the microwave (it turned out awesome) and Matthew made cookie bars (very dry, but he was sure impressed with them). Other years they made meal dishes, Matthew's favorite is corn casserole and Melissa has favored decorating the room and table to make the day extra special. On Christmas day we like to have a special brunch, Dave tells the Christmas story, we eat, and then officially receive gifts. I say receive because for the past three years each of us set a dollar amount and pick out our own gifts. The gifts are set under the tree and greatly anticipated until we finally receive them. We have really come to value the time that we shop together to pick out the gifts, even though the past two years I had to order their gifts from specialty catalogs. Shopping has been primarily for togetherness fun. I dislike holidays in which people I haven't spent much time with must figure out what to buy me or I them. I prefer to shop or do something together so I can can get to know them better.... this is a much nicer and more meaningful gift. I know that my kids would not be able to tell you all that they received as gifts three years ago, but they would be able to tell you what we did together and who did/ said something funny or sad, etc.

Over the past few years this is the order we tend to do things ... always make a big batch of hot cocoa and stock up on herbal teas around December 6th about the time we put up the tree and begin decorating. I say begin because we usually keep adding decor over the following weeks. This has allowed us to be prepared for snows and sledding.... they are getting older now and have more responsibilities so there is less snow play time (and oddly enough we have had no snow this year yet), but coming in for a nice warm cup of hot cocoa when it is cold is still a favorite. The first favorite sweet is chocolate coated pretzel sticks and biscotti (my favorite) and next favorite is the puppy chow mix... for some reason this is one that DH and the kids feel should be on hand at all times during the month of December.

One of my favorite home school memories is when it snowed. This was ALWAYS a time to delay all school plans and go sledding, my kids were the first to get to the best sledding hill or to make a snowman that was the first to say, "Welcome Winter" to all the kids walking home from school ready to have snow fun too. Hot cocoa was the best to warm up with.

Homemade Hot Cocoa Mix
2 & 1/2 cups soy milk powder (Better Than Milk Vanilla is excellent)
3/4 cup natural sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
Dash of salt
In a large mixing bowl combine all ingredients.
Blend well.
Store in airtight container.
Makes about 15 servings.

Single Serving:
Combine 1/4 cup mix and 3/4 cup boiling water in a cup. Stir to blend.
If you like a chocolate mint flavor, stir with a candy cane... my favorite to to stir with a chocolate mint candy cane.

Here's a link to some homemade gift ideas ...
HOT COCOA GIFT IDEAS

DH comes form a large family intermixed with step siblings. At one time the girl friend of a step child of a step sibling (sorry for the complexity) worked at Starbucks. A few of us were commenting that we would love the recipe for the gingerbread late from her workplace. Well, she sent it to us.... last I knew she was no longer employed there and I don;t think it had anything to do with leaking secret recipes.

Gingerbread Latte for two
3 cups of (soy) milk
3 Tbsp. Of Starbucks® Gingerbread syrup
Two shots of Starbucks Espresso® Pods
Pinch of Ground Nutmeg
Steam milk with Starbucks Barista Athena™. Place Starbucks Gingerbread Syrup in preheated coffee mug. Brew single shot of espresso, using pre-measured Starbucks Espresso Pod, and pour immediately. Top with steamed milk and foam. Garnish foam with a light dusting of nutmeg, crushed gingerbread cookies, or a light touch of cinnamon sugar. Settle back and enjoy this delightful holiday treat!

Here is a recipe from my recipe files for homemade
"Gingerbread" Syrup
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1Tbs shredded fresh ginger
1" piece cinnamon stick
Put all ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to boil. Turn to simmer. Simmer for 10 - 15 minutes, until sugar is dissolved, and mixture is syrupy. Cool. Strain. Store in jar in fridge. Will thicken when cooled.
-----
If you don't have an espresso machine,
just stir Gingerbread Syrup into hot coffee (to taste).
Top with whipped topping and a sprinkling of nutmeg or cinnamon-sugar

Pumpkin Granola Bars
The pumpkin puree in this recipe makes these tasty granola bars nutritious.
Wet Ingredients:
Blend until thickened and smooth. (I use the large magic blender cup)
3/4 c. pumpkin puree
1.5 teaspoon Ener-g egg replacer
1/4 cup water
1/4 c. margarine at room temperature (or sub 3 Tbsp olive oil)
1/3 C sorghum molasses OR substitute with the following syrup combination
(sub) 1/4 cup rice syrup or corn syrup with 2 T. black strap molasses

Dry Ingredients:
2 c. rolled oats
1/3 c. chopped pumpkin seeds
1/4 C currants or chopped raisins
2 T. shredded, unsweetened coconut
1/4 c. wheat germ
1/2 t. ground cinnamon
1 T. grated orange rind
Blend the wet ingredients. Combine the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl ( in the oats, seeds and dried fruit, coconut, wheat germ, cinnamon, and orange rind. Add the wet blend and mix well. Spread this mixture into a lightly greased 15 1/2-by-10 1/2-inch jelly-roll pan. Bake in a 325 degree F oven for 40 minutes or until golden brown. While still warm, cut into 3-by-1 1/2-inch bars. For very crisp bars, remove from pan to wire rack and cool completely. Cut in typical "granola" bar shapes. Wrap in parchment paper and store in refrigerator for a week or two and the freezer for longer term storage. Yield: about 30 bars.

soup, soup and weird biscotti

2006-12-14T18:11:00.000-06:00

We have colds here, drats. It is nice to say I eat a healthy diet and I hardly ever get colds - not today! I think that in our previous homeschooling lifestyle the kids and I didn't have to be in closed places with bacteria and viruses so we rarely ever got sick (except Dave who would occasionally bring a bug home from work). This week I met with several other student teachers who also had colds, but then I have heard from long time teachers who have said they think they must have built up a resistance and rarely catch anything going around. I hope to get to that stage soon, until then I will have germ-x at my desk.

Great news for me, but bittersweet for bakehouse customers. I completed my student teaching experience officially on Wednesday! (YEAH ME!) So now I am home for a few weeks and I plan on restocking my canned soup supply because I am nearly out and opening up a jar of MY soup for lunch or a fast meal was way to easy! On Thursday I was offered a full-time contract at my school to begin January 2 .... I was very pleased with the deal and accepted. I intend to continue to be a vegan food and family blogger, but bakehouse work will be at a standstill until maybe summertime when I am on summer break and pull out the garden equipment and prepare for the farmer's market.

I thought I'd do something savory today because we have been eating goods other than cookies, sweet breads, and the other fattening stuff - these are two of Dreena's soups. One is made with wild rice and mushrooms and the other is called soulful chili. I loved the wildness of the soup and will definitely make this again, Dreena said that one pan makes alot so there will be some to store... not at our house. The chili made more. I often purchase mushrooms in a gallon can ..... no, they are not as good as fresh but worked for a wonderfully satisfying meal. A gallon can equals ALOT so some of the mushrooms get made into into burgers, pizza toppings, other soups, and stir fries.

The soulful chili was pretty, but a tad tart for my mexi chili sin carne standard. The chili I usually make calls for a little cocoa powder for a rich, dark bowl of tomatoey, beany and TVP crumble goodness. I also tried VwaV Roasted garlic and white bean stew. DH and I loved this. Although I cook alot I have never roasted garlic before, however I will surely roast it again someday! I took leftovers for lunch with me the next day and carried a little breath mint.

Saturday we went shopping together as a family. Dave has been working towards getting his CDL license because he wants to help our neighbor and owner of a auto repair and towing service with getting broke down and stranded travelers in his spare time. He got his permit so he can now ride along. He is excited like a boy with great big toys to play with.

Anyway we stopped by one of my favorite food coops. They had a vegan miso soup for sale. I enjoyed the simpleness of it. I made some based off of a recipe from the cookbook Lighten Up! with Louise Hagler: Tastey, low-fat, low-calorie vegetarian cuisine. It is vegan though. I enjoyed this tastey soup!

Here's my recipe of MISO SOUP:
1 onion, sliced thin
1 tsp olive oil (to saute the onions in until softened).
Then add:
6 cups of water
3/4 cup red miso
2 carrots sliced thin
1/3 cup chopped dry parsley
1/2 pound of firm regular tofu cut into 1/2 inch cubes
Cook over high heat until liquid comes to a boil, turn down heat and simmer until carrots are soft. Enjoy!

THEN . . .

For fun and uniqueness I wanted to try a different biscotti recipe. Bryanna posted a "breakfast" biscotti recipe some time ago that called for a little tofu, tahini, nuts, dried chopped fruit and whole wheat pastry flour. I thought the recipe looked good, but a tad rich for my personal preference (although I often make rich since I have a family members who needs the extra calories). I am the kind of person who likes to eat big so I often attempt low cal foods that allows me the feeling of fullness. I totally took the recipe out of context and did my own thing. The result I will present to you here.

Dori's weird, but satisfying (to her)
BREAKFAST BISCOTTI:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Place parchment paper on oven sheet lightly coat with oil spray.

Dry Mix:
Combine in a medium mixing bowl.
2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 tsp KAL stevia extract powder
a1/2 cup quick oats
3/4 C raisins
1/3 C unsweet carob chips
1/4 C ground flax seed
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Wet Mix:
I blended this in my largest magic bullet cup and it all fit.
1 - 12.3 oz mori-nu firm light silken tofu
1 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp cinnamon
4 tsp ener-g egg replacer powder
1/2 c applesauce

Add wet mix into dry and combine until all dry is mixed. It is a thick batter, almost feels kneadable but I just kept working the dry into the wet. With water wet hands shape the dough into a rectangular loaf about 1" thick. Bake for 25 -30 minutes. Remove the pan and reduce oven to 300 degrees. Keep the loaf on the parchment paper, but remove both to a wire cooling rack to cool for 20 minutes. Cut the loaf into 12 slices (about 3/4 - 1" wide), this cut easily with a 8" serrated bread knife. Place the slices on a cookie sheet (see picture above) and bake 20 minutes, turn the biscotti over and bake 20 minutes more. Cool on a wire rack. These taste better when fully cool. The bitterness of the unsweet carob chips combined with the raisins was a real treat for me. Although it didn't have the same crispy/crumbly or hardness as some biscotti I have tried I really enjoyed this. I had them ALL eaten in two days (by myself thank you very much). I don't think that Dave and the kids would have liked these very much because of the bittersweetness of the unsweet carob chips, but I didn't give them a chance to let me know if they did or not.

Calorie wise, eating six of these cookies in a day amounts to 400 calories of whole wheat pastry and 1/4 C quick oats flour combined with 70 calories of lite silken tofu and 1/4 C applesauce. They were VERY filling.

Baking Extravaganza #2

2006-12-07T14:34:00.000-06:00

I finished the baking order today, delivered it, and deposited the money into the bank. You have witnessed an order consisting of 390 cookies, 130 muffins, and 130 fruity italian sweet breads panetones NOT pantalonnes ... this is the reason I was baking so much... although we have a few leftovers I actually haven't started baking for our family favorite foods yet. The food is for a survival pack students at a nearby college get to receive for finals week if their parents opt to pay for it.

This blog entry will be about the cookies. I use stackable cooling racks. I have 24 of these. I filled this order in my home, but if I was taking orders for Christmas baked goods like I have in years past I would have used my commercial oven at the bakehouse... right now I didn't have enough to make it worth it besides my convertion oven in our home kitchen does an okay job if I turn pans around halfway through baking times.

Here is a picture of VWAV ginger cookies. These are wonderfully spicy and I agree with Isa's comment in the book, they really are better the next day! I made the first batch of cookies much smaller than the recipe yeild and also noticed that they were considerable smaller than the other cookies in the order (I ended up with 96 cookies when the recipe yield said 62), so I started again. Darn, now I have 96 wonderful spicy and very pretty 2 1/2" diameter cookies. What's girl to to? Oops! Now I have 95, mmmm that was good. I will be taking a container of these cookies into the school to share on Friday (tommorrow) as a thanks for the staff for making my time there a good one.

I also made the pumpkin oatmeal using cranberries instead of raisin, which were Melissa's favorites. I only had 6 leftover pumpkin cookies which the family usually taste tests while they are still warm from the oven. This particular day there was such variety that there were a couple of cookies of each leftover the next day. The pumpkin ones get better also. I had a picture of these, but somehow I accidentally deleted it. They are a pretty golden orange color with very noticable red craisins showing through.

I thought DH would love the maple cookies best. Pictured left are the ones from Vive Le Vegan. They are a large cakey style cookie that I didn't think ended up very sweet, he liked them better frosted. I didn't add nuts into the dough, just one large one on the top. I noticed VWAV has a maple cookie recipe also, maybe I would like to try that one soon to compare. Maybe next week. The peanut better cookies a few pages away from this recipe had the same kind of cakey style results, so I chocolate drizzled them and he said, "Mmm, like a reeces candy!"

I purchased plastic 1/2 sheet cake boxes from a local grocery store to put the cookies in. I had seven different kinds for the students to choose from, the picture shows two of the boxes. Each student would get to pick a choice of three cookies each, I provided 4 x 14 inch baggies for them to carry the cookies away in. Notice the label on the box, I used a mini clip of the cookbooks from which I took the recipes from. I had to give them a list of ingredients, but not the recipe... they can get that for themself now if they buy the book. No middle man sales percentage needed authors, just keep the great recipes coming :)

Next up is the Italian panetones NOT pantalonnes (fruited sweet bread). I used one of Bryanna's recipe for a valentine danish roll to adapt for the dough (mt adaption recipe and instructions below). I added 2/3 cup dried fruit (chopped apricots, raisins, and craisins) that had been soaked in a little (about 1/4 C) boiling water after the dough was finished kneading. Baked at 350 degrees for 15 minutes minutes, or until browned to a desireable color.

SWEET DOUGH RECIPE:
1 c. rich soymilk (such as Vitasoy)
1/4 c. Earth Balance
1/4 c. light granulated unbleached or white beet sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 packet (2 and 1/2 tsp. dry active baking yeast (NOT instant)
1/4 c. warm water
3 c. unbleached flour (NOT pastry flour)
1/2 tsp. pure almond extract
1 tsp. grated organic lemon zest
In a small saucepan (or in a bowl in the microwave), scald the soymilk (heat to just before boiling). Remove from heat. Add the Earth Balance, sugar and salt. Stir until butter melts and let cool to just warm.
Here is the bread dough rising on baking sheet sprinkled with semolina flour. I can bake three pans at once in my home convection oven, si i size the bread recipe to ensure that I get only as much as I can bake up at one time. At the bakehouse in the commercial convection oven this is rarely a problem I have four large racks that can each hold as much as my one household oven holds.

When the soymilk is just warm dissolve the yeast in the warm water. When it is soft, add it to the milk mixture in a medium bowl, or bowl of an electric mixer with a dough hook, along with the almond extract and lemon zest. Stir in 1 and 1/2 c. of the flour and beat well. Gradually add 1 more cup flour to make a soft dough. Turn out on a board and knead 5 minutes, adding some of the 1/2 c. flour, as necessary. The dough should be soft and velvety smooth, knead in the fruit (make sure it does not have excess water).

IF YOU WANT TO MAKE THE DOUGH IN A FOOD PROCESSOR, add 2 and 1/2 c. flour to the bowl, then, with the motor running, pour in the liquid ingredients. Process until it comes to a ball on the blade, adding a little more flour if necessary—but don’t make too dry, and process 30 seconds.

Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 45 minutes. Or, if you want to prepare it the night before to bake in the morning, brush with oil, cover with plastic warp, or place inside of a large new plastic bag and seal. Leaving room to rise, and refrigerate overnight.

Have your oven preheated to 350 degrees F when ready to bake. I cut this recipe into 8 small round loaves. It could be shaped or braided in various ways. The cooking time would be considerably longer with larger amounts of dough. Bake the mini loaves about 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Larger loaves 25 - 35 minutes. Cool on a rack and do not bag until completly warm.

Here they are in a box, bagged and labeled.

Midwest Vegan asked me in the last post how long baking this order took me. Lets just say that there are psychological perks of what I do. I once calulated how much I made per hour for selling goods at a farmers market. At that time I was making about $300 weekly... I made less than minimum wage for the time I put in. It did afford me the freedom of being at home when I needed to be and allowed me to provide my children a real world homeschool education. This business started as a homeschool project and was one of the best "curriculums" I ever invested in. Yes, we showed a profit on the books but we did not make hourly wages. Now that my children are of an age they make money in other ways (despite the fact that I miss them very much and desire for them to come home and bake with their mama again), I am preparing to go back into work away from home and maintain our "hobby" business for summer work for the next few years. Two kids in college and a retirement plan needing a little more cash investments are good reasons to make my hours more prosperous.

Sometime next week I will begin making a few things for out personal family and friend / neighbor gifts. I have a large order of cinnamon and maple nut rolls to bake next week also, I use an oatmeal dough with these and I'll share my recipe next week. This weekend I am taking a break away from my oven, going to a movie with DH Friday night, doing the shopping thing on Saturday. I will be complete my student teaching experience on Wednesday. I am looking at three job opportunities right now. I am unsure as to which I most interested in, for now I am going to enjoy the weekend and think more about work another day.

The last picture here is of one night's baking, prior to the cookies going into the freezer to store until delivery day.