Hi everyone! Long time no blog. I honestly thought my food blogging days were behind me. It felt like my priorities or rather my hobbies shifted after becoming a family of 3. It certainly feels like I have less time for myself during the day.
But, but, but…. I have this really awesome recipe that I just had to share because I know you’ll love it too. Read the rest of this entry »
We made these delicious raw cookie dough treats at the cottage.
Let’s just say the cottage was a tad rustic….. so when there was no vanilla, Bailey’s Irish Cream was the substitute. Have no fear, the cottage is stocked with all the essentials.
The recipe is based from Oh She Glows but we added the Bailey’s and added some ground flax seeds for more good stuff. It actually stuck together without it as well. In fact, the dough was so smooth, it honestly reminded me of real cookie dough. With a touch of baking soda/powder, we were actually wondering whether they really would turn into cookies. While we made a double batch, there was no time to experiment since we gobbled them down. We had a few that we packed for home, but we ate them all during our traffic-thick ride home.
In all honesty, it was hard to detect the Bailey’s but I think I had one which was more boozy. I wonder if it helps keep it less icy after being frozen. I think that’s why alcohol is added to homemade ice cream, right?
What kind of essentials do you keep at your cottage?
You may also enjoy these recipes:
First of all, no.
No, I am not lactating.
No, I am not pregnant.
I do know quite a few new moms, becoming an aunt twice within the span of two weeks. It was a bountiful Thanksgiving.
I also do not profess these cookies will induce increased breast milk production. There is not much scientific evidence to recommend dietary galactagogues, but I see no harm in eating wholesome cookies packed with whole foods, namely rolled oats, flax seeds, coconut oil, raisins and wait for the kicker: Brewer’s yeast.
While I use nutritional yeast regularly, Brewer’s yeast is entirely different. Both are inactivated yeasts but Brewer’s yeast is byproduct from brewing beer. Both yeasts provide a good dose of both B vitamins and protein although Brewer’s yeast traditionally is high in chromium.
Most importantly, while I like the taste of nooch (nutty/cheesy/tangy), Brewer’s yeast is typically very bitter. I tracked down a debittered Brewer’s yeast at a local health food store (it also appears to be stocked by Bulk Barn, should that interest you) and happily ranhobbled home to make some mama-friendly cookies.
You wouldn’t really know these were healthy cookies. These taste like a caramel-infused oatmeal raisin cookie. Soft and chewy with a firmer exterior. There is a slight tangy aftertaste that I attribute to the Brewer’s yeast but otherwise my brother and sister-in-law both gave them the thumbs up. No word yet on getting extra milk, though. My brother definitely not.
Did you try new foods when you were breastfeeding?
PS. I am sharing this with Random Recipes (google search for vegan lactation cookies) and Dead Easy Desserts.
Hello again!
Sorry for the all the unanswered comments over the last month…. but thank you for hanging in there!
Usually I have this “do not mention you are going on vacation” mentality so that people come to rob my place. Although, for this special time, we had no home to rob. (Our stuff is still in a shipping cube somewhere, so please do not steal it). As we moved back to Canada, we had a very long detour. Rob and I set out for a month-long vacation in Madagascar and South Africa. We have both done extensive travelling (Rob more so than I) but we both agreed that travelling through Madagascar was the hardest we have ever travelled.
As I regroup for a daunting August (in which I start independent practice, write some exams, celebrate the arrivals of niblings (one is an expected niece, the other TBD) and somehow fit in training for Cycle Oregon. Oh, and unpack all our stuff, because it will meet us a week late), I will likely keep a slower pace for my posts.
Until then, I am thankful that Kathy has shared with me this fabulous photo and recipe from her upcoming cookbook OATrageous Oatmeals. I also reviewed Kathy’s Great Vegan Bean Book, which I really like, so I am thrilled to share her creativity with oats.
Do not be fooled, this book is way more than oatmeal. Yes, she has oatmeal recipes designed for each part of the year, including cooling summer overnight oats (Blueberry Earl Grey Overnight Refrigerator Oats ) and warming bakes for the winter like Pumpkin Oat Breakfast Cake. She also has a chapter for snacks like Peanut Butter Banana Granola Bars and later a dessert section with treats like Mini Raspberry Cakes and Chai-Spiced Oatmeal Tart with Warm Coconut-Vanilla Sauce.
However, I am most excited about experimenting with her savoury options. She has an entire chapter for soups (Scottish-Inspired Mushroom Lentil Stew, Fragrant Yellow Split Pea and Rolled Oat Dal) and another for savory options like Cauliflower Oat Pizza Crust, Indian Oats Upma, Oat Dosa, Not-from-a-Box Mac and Oat Chez and Oats-bury Steaks. And even beyond the kitchen, she has recipes for Soothing Lavender Oat Bath Soak and Oatmeal Cookie Scrub.
How do you like to use oats?
To celebrate her new cookbook, Kathy is offering a pre-order giveaway from OXO along with a copy of her cookbook. Click here to enter (open until August 4). After you pre-order the book, submit your receipt to Kathy for special recipes, coupons and your chance to win a different OXO prize.
Recipes from OATrageous Oatmeals spotted elsewhere:
Blackberry Mojito Overnight Refrigerator Oats
Coconut Oat Vanilla Nut Creamer
Steel Cut Oat Sausage Crumbles
I am sharing this with Healthy Vegan Fridays, Bookmarked Recipes, Virtual Vegan Linky Potluck and Laura’s Strange but Good.
I almost thought about making my blog vacation all about chickpea flour. I have been experimenting with it a lot more and this was a fun venture into sweet pancakes.
I was drawn to Gena’s recipe because they were protein pancakes without protein powder. While I am no stranger to savoury chickpea flour pancakes (aka besan chilla), I liked how these were more traditional. Here, chickpea flour is combined with cashew flour and soy milk for a heartier base.
They did not fluff up like regular pancakes, but were good for a lazy weekend breakfast. I topped them with a quickie raspberry chia jam for a summer twist. Forget boiling the fruit as in my blueberry vanilla chia jam. I simply defrosted some frozen raspberries in the microwave, added some chia seeds and waited a few minutes. The jam was a nice sweet contrast when rolled inside the pancakes.
I am sharing this with Dead Easy Desserts.
I don’t think I have ever eaten so many bananas in one day. I lost count, but I think I ate eight during the Shiner GASP. Never mind the oranges, peanuts and bars, oh and lots of water. I had those, too, but ate a banana nearly every rest stop. Rob and I also had some almost-sorry bananas after the hot weekend. My friend stepped on the tip of one by mistake so I knew I had to eat it soon. Too impatient to wait for them to freeze for smoothies, I made these mini cakes instead. 5 ingredients and 15 minutes later, I had a fudgy, gooey, chocolately delight.
5 ingredients, 15 minutes seems gimmicky, but it is the premise of Doug McNish’s latest cookbook: Raw, Quick and Delicious. I have been sitting on this one for a while. During the winter, I had little desire to eat raw foods but now that summer has arrived, my time is short, I cannot eat through this cookbook fast enough. Smoothies, salads, and dressings, McNish has you covered for interesting combinations (spiced apricot smoothie, caprese stacked salad, curried carrot dressing). Furthermore, he includes breakfasts (cashew scramble wrap), main courses (raw sweet potato enchiladas!), snacks (cinnamon apple almond stacks!) and desserts (pecan pie brownies), none of which ask for a dehydrator or take too long to create. Some recipes call for sub-recipes throughout the book, though, but nothing seems too onerous. He focused on sharing recipes without fancy equipment or techniques, letting vegetables shine.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from this simple concoction. Needless to say, I was sceptical, but I ran with it. Doug knows his food.
Gooey chocolate bliss. The bananas create a soft, gooey consistency that is held together with the flax seeds, but there are enough flax seeds to give this some structure, too. Since it takes only 10 minutes to set and no baking is required, it is a bit gooey, but who doesn’t like their chocolate cake super moist? I particularly liked it with the accent of the fresh banana slices to counter the darker chocolate flavour. (FYI, I tried it first with less agave, but tasted it and felt it deserved the full amount).
Need a way to eat copious amounts of flax seeds with glee? This would be it! You certainly don’t taste it.
There are a few selected photos in the cookbook and they are gorgeous, including this one for these cakes:
Thankfully, the publisher allowed me to share the recipe and giveaway the cookbook to a reader living in the United States or Canada. To be entered in the random draw for the cookbook, please leave a comment below telling me about your quickest and/or easiest raw dish. The winner will be selected at random on May 20, 2014. Good luck!
Recipes from Raw, Quick and Delicious spotted elsewhere:
Date Muesli
Quick Thai Cream Sauce
Grapefruit Mint and Arugula Salad
Avocado Cucumber Hand Rolls
Summer Corn Cakes
Curried Cashews and Mixed Vegetables
Steak and Potatoes
Squash Burrito
Mushroom Tart
Coconut Macaroons
Strawberry Coconut Shortcake Tart
Note: I was given a copy of the cookbook from the publisher. I was under no obligation to share a review. The opinions expressed are entirely my own.
PS. I am sharing this with Random Recipes, Dead Easy Desserts and to the last Raw Foods Thursday.
Breakfast Chocolate Mocha Pudding Cake.
Because all things with rolled oats are actually meant for breakfast. Add coffee to it, some chocolate for good measures, then there is no question: this is all good breakfast things. A perfect way to start your day.
Because that coffee at night, may keep you awake. Or maybe it was the chocolate.
This was how I rationalized eating this for breakfast.
Eaten fresh, this is basically a self-saucing cake. A chunky dense cake doused in a mocha-chocolate sauce. It was really good, although a bit gummy from the oat flour.
I apologize for the unappealing photographs, but the leftovers were what I had to work with… The leftovers firmed up a lot after the overnight rest, sopping up the sauce, leaving this with a texture more comparable to leftover oatmeal. I hope you still get the idea that this is saucy, though.
Just so you know, I debated remaking this to get a better photo, but decided to share it anyways. My motto is to keep things stress-free and I wanted to share this sooner rather than later.
Chocolate pudding cake has always been associated with the Good Friday Cooking Disaster of 2009, wherein I made a meatless feast with a black bean and pumpkin soup, penne alla vodka and finished it off with a brownie pudding cake. Of course, all were new recipes that I was dying to try out. If I recall correctly, everyone was mostly satisfied with my first two dishes (I remember the penne alla vodka turning out well but I had to simmer off a lot of liquid) but all heck broke loose when I shared dessert. My family did not like it and they told me very bluntly. (Too sweet! I can cook better than you!) That last part is true.
However, I think everyone would love this pudding cake, for dessert or breakfast. Or both. Rob highly approved. For both.
In addition of its association with the upcoming Easter holiday, I also wanted to share this because I received some lovely ingredients to try courtesy of Carrington Farms, ground flax seeds and coconut oil, both of which I used here. Because this is a pudding cake filled with all good things. Check out stores near you celebrating Carrington Farm’s All Good April campaign by passing deals to you, too. In Houston, you can find that at HEB and Fiesta Mart. They also have additional coupons on their website.
Disclosure: I wrote this review as part of the #CarringtonAllGoodApril campaign with Carrington Farms, through FitFluential LLC. I received the products described at no cost in order to complete the review. However, opinions are honest and my own.
PS. This is my submission to We Should Cocoa, Love Cake, and Let’s Cook Sweet Treats for Easter. Read the rest of this entry »
I may have been late to the Valentine’s Day dessert sharing by a week and truthfully, Pancake Tuesday was never on my radar.
Since there is a create-eat-blog lag, obviously, I need to be thinking about upcoming holidays months in advance. Red for Valentine’s Day? No. Green. Green is the new red, right? With what, St Patrick’s Day in March, right?
Joking aside, because I really don’t need an excuse to make a fun raw crepe inspired by one of my favourite childhood desserts: grasshopper crepes. My mom may chime whether this recipe is close to what she used to make: a marshmallow-cream filling spiked with creme de menthe is surrounded by a paper-thin chocolate crepe. YES! Of course, I haven’t had it in ages, but the classic flavours of chocolate and mint never fail.
I used an old favourite recipe for the chocolate banana crepes but switched up the filling by whipping together avocado, frozen banana and mint. I prefer the flavour from the mint extract instead of the mint leaves, but the mint leaves kind-of-sort-of made the filling green. I should have added a touch of spirulina to really make it sparkle!
This is my submission to this week’s Raw Food Thursdays, Dead Easy Desserts and Cooking with Herbs.
There was How I Spent My New Year’s Eve and now How I Spent My New Year’s Day.
Who did not enjoy a mid-week hump day holiday?
Because we had returned to Houston, this was a New Year’s Day like no other. It was reasonably warm outside. Rob had a taco craving. The much-hyped taco restaurant was open on January 1. We wanted to cycle. So we combined the plans.
In truth, while I cycle to/from work every day, our weekend rides have dwindled in between all our travel, cold and rainy weather and lastly Rob’s cold. By the time I became infected, I was only inflicted by a minor sore throat (so far, at least). I didn’t let that stop us from cycling for tacos.
Instead of our dawn-cracking bicycle rides of summer yonder, our winter cycling is more of an afternoon affair. In Houston, daily temperatures are at their peak around 3-4 pm, whereas in Toronto, it is more like 1-2 pm. In any case, we forged ahead. Rob picked the location that would lead best to a bike ride.
We picked a nice bike trail that is fairly sheltered from motorists. While construction has demolished its uninterrupted bicycle bliss (Houston’s construction season must be winter), it was a great ride… and surprisingly without too many other people sharing the path.
While the bike ride was fantastic, nearly 40 km and with a good pace, we had a much slower pace at the restaurant. Because it was THE place to be… we had to wait at least 15 minutes prior to being seated. Rob felt vindicated, though. He had eaten the best tacos yet, although I still feel like those in Mexico City were superior. Rob pointed out that the commute is much easier if we stay within Houston.
Hope you enjoyed your holiday, too.
After our ride, I treated us to this delicious smoothie. A little messy, but I decided not to clean up my mess. All for a better photo, no? 😉
While we have a freezer filled with frozen bananas, I like to whip together banana-free smoothies, too. Dates and lucuma powder provide the sweet caramel undertones for this creamy smoothie. Banana usually lends well to both creaminess and sweetness, and in this case, the creaminess comes from tofu, hemp seeds and macadamia nuts. It is actually a very simple smoothie but it tasted great. It kind of brought whole foods smoothie to a new level for me (due to the lack of non-dairy milk). In addition to the lack of banana, this smoothie was fun because you basically create your own non-dairy milk from macadamia nuts and tofu.
This is just one of the creative craveable concoctions from Julie Morris’ Superfood Smoothies. She has really outdone herself, because there are so many wonderful drinks here: watermelon acai, carrot cardamom, mango chili, cucumber mint, chocolate kale, mint chip, mayan chocolate, maca oat, pineapple maca, red velvet cake (with roasted beets!) and even a chocolate smoothie with cauliflower.
All of the smoothie focus on plant-based ingredients, with a special focus on superfoods. Superfoods including standard fruits and vegetables but also less common ingredients (aka expensive) like acai, macqui, maca and camu powders, dried mulberries, hemp seeds, and fresh coconut water. A handy substitution chart at the back of the book will help with substitutions, but let’s be honest: smoothies are meant to be forgiving. Most of the time, the hard-to-find ingredients could be omitted altogether since they are used in limited amount, substituted with something more common or you could splurge and just use a little bit of them for each smoothie, which would last you a long time. A bit more of a bother for me was the inclusion of different juices in the recipes – carrot, apple, orange, pomegranate, aloe, etc. I would rather throw in a whole carrot than only use its juice, but one is way more sweet than the other… and way more juicy. If you use the recipes as a guide, I don’t think you will be let down. Furthermore, while there may or may not be a conflict of interest, Julie is a spokesperson and executive chef for a company that sells said expensive superfoods. Although her work with the Smoothment (Smoothie Movement), may indeed make her an expert with such ingredients. Perhaps if you drink your way through this cookbook, you will become one, too.
Thankfully the publisher is letting me give a cookbook to one reader living in the continental United States (sorry to all my non-US readers). To be entered, please leave a comment here, telling me about your favourite smoothie. If you have yet to venture into the land of smoothies, have a look through the index of Superfood Smoothies on amazon (or any of the smoothies listed here) and tell me what you want to drink the most. I will randomly select a winner on January 15, 2014. Good luck!
Superfood Smoothies spotted elsewhere:
Toasted Coconut and Macadamia Smoothie
Lemon-Lime Smoothie (with Bok Choy!)
Cocoa Cream (aka Chocolate Dream Smoothie)
This is my submission to this week’s Weekend Wellness and to this month’s Random Recipes.
As I prepare to return to Canada for the holidays, Houston tugs dearly at my heart. With glorious December weather, it has taken less then 6 months for me to not miss snow. At all. Certainly, it does not feel very much like winter, but each time I cycle to work in shorts, I am positively beaming.
Life has been a terribly wonderful busy whirlwind lately, so I apologize for being behind on replying to comments and for my disappearance next week.
I have one fabulous treat to share before the end of the year, though. December is probably the only month I could get away with sharing so many treats.
This is dedicated to all those looking for the perfect homemade protein bar. In brownie form. Is there anything you can not improve by adding chocolate?
These brownies are so good for you, you wouldn’t even know it. Although I haven’t had time to make them for my Canadian excursion, I had a bit of forethought before flying to Mexico City. I was not certain of the vegan options, so I tried to cover myself with a protein-packed treat. I thought of making my chocolate mint protein bars again, but of course, I wanted to try something new.
Still based on cocoa and protein powder, this was a treat that wasn’t heavy on nuts and dates. Gooey and dense from zucchini, apple and a touch of oats and coconut flour with a heap of protein powder. Chocolate chips also added a great textural foil and bursts of sweetness. Rob decreed the chocolate chips essential to the recipe and confirmed you could not taste any hemp undertones.
While they may not be the best brownies, compared to all other brownies, they are definitely wonderful and possibly my favourite protein snack, to date. (For those interested in their stats: 219 calories, 7g fat, 26g carbs and 16g protein). I successfully halved the original recipe into my small 6″ springform pan, and it made enough for a short weekend trip.
Make sure to flatten the brownies as best you can, because there is no settling of the batter… and thus they may not look the most appealing.
Perhaps that is for the best. If you bring them to a holiday party, there will be more for you!! 🙂
Happy holidays everyone. 🙂
PS. The winner for Soup’s On was Move Eat Create.
What is better than a potluck with delicious vegan food? A potluck with delicious vegan food, complete with recipes!
Recently, some new friends invited me over for a Ripe-themed supper. Stephanie, the mastermind behind Ripe Cuisine, serves vegan eats at a few farmer’s markets in Houston but also has a recipe blog. I have gushed about her homemade coconut-almond ice cream before and since I knew her recipe for brownies was good, I was excited to see how her other recipes fared.
Broccoli “cream” soup with polenta croutons, baked zucchini chips, tahini mustard carrots, and cauliflower piccata were on the menu. Veggie extraveganza! Everything was delicious. I really enjoyed the carrots and polenta croutons.
My small contribution to the menu that evening was this cheesecake. I say small due to its size, not its taste. For my birthday, Rob surprised me with a smaller 6″ springform pan. I left my larger one in Toronto and brought this one so I could make smaller versions of dessert.
I love raw/no-bake cheesecakes. I have made them with cashews as well as tofu, but this time, I used them together. And I baked it. Both for synergistic results.
This cheesecake is a combination of a few recipes and both are knock-outs. The filling is courtesy of Ricki Heller‘s new cookbook, Naturally Sweet & Gluten-Free. Since these recipes are all gluten-free and sugar-free, they employ ingredients I don’t have in my (mostly) minimalist pantry. I tried to stay mostly true to her recipe, though, even scoping out lemon extract. I realized that having a concentrated lemon flavour without the sourness would be a good way to reduce the amount of sweetener needed, without resorting to Meyer lemons.
This was a delicious cheesecake. Possibly our favourite vegan cheesecake of all time. Very rich in a non-heavy sense, which can happen with raw cheesecakes, relying on cashews and coconut oil. However, sadly, after chilling in the fridge, it was no longer a lemon cheesecake; it morphed into a creamy, rich, vanilla cheesecake. Equally as good, just a different flavour. The lemon flavour disappeared considerably. I really like the tang from lemon juice, so next time I would add more lemon juice in addition to more lemon extract. It was a very nice cheesecake, though. I also liked how I had the height to really get a good size piece on my fork with the smaller pan. You’ll understand when you look at my (much more flat) lemon cheesecake squares. Rob agreed, and we both thought this was the best, most “real” vegan cheesecake we have eaten (albeit a fluffier European-style cheesecake, which is our preference).
And the crust? A perfect foil for the rich, more mellow filling. A salty-sweet cinnamon pecan crust with oat flour that I snagged from Angela’s pumpkin pie adventures. She tasted a few crusts and proclaimed this the winner. Definitely one of my favourite crusts, too. I liked that it was sweet and salty (no dates) and the cinnamon spike brought it over the edge. I was worried the crust was a bit crumbly but it held together well when serving from the fridge.
I try to keep this blog real, and yes, this cheesecake was utterly delicious. However, it also cracked. This could be due to a few things, but next time, I will add a basin of water in the oven. I did that with the Meyer Lemon Cheesecake Squares, and it worked well. With some strategic slicing, you could hide the cracks. Or find a saucy topping. (Ricki suggested a blueberry compote which I think would have been divine!) But really, it doesn’t matter unless you are photographing it because it still tasted delicious. Do you have any other tricks for cracked cheesecakes? What is your favourite vegan cheesecake recipe?
Ricki has been travelling the interwebs with her blog tour and I have been enjoying seeing her recipes all over the place. With all the thoughtful Q&As, I feel like I am really getting to know Ricki, the chef/baker, but most importantly, the person behind her recipes. A trained chef with a former catering company, watching her on video is like a fun cooking class, with so many tips about ingredients and techniques. I also recommend these recipes from Ricki’s new cookbook:
Ricki’s recipes from Naturally Sweet & Gluten-Free shared elsewhere:
Chocolate-Flecked Pumpkin Seed Cookies
Butterscotch Blondies with Chocolate Chips and Goji Berries
Chocolate “Buttercream” Frosting
Ultra-Fudgy Gluten-Free Brownies
PS. Today is the last day to enter my giveaway for Isa Does It.
This is my submission to this month’s Bookmarked Recipes and this week’s Health Vegan Fridays.
I feel a bit guilty sharing this post.
1. It will be a quickie vacation gush over Portland.
2. More easy peasy food. I feel guilty sharing such a simple recipe but it was SO GOOD.
Oddly enough, despite travelling to Japan, Morocco, Iceland and Colombia throughout my blog tenure, I have yet to do any thorough vacation recaps. Mostly sharing the recipes they have inspired back in my kitchen or the treats I made to travel with me.
Those destinations seem so foreign and mostly inaccessible to the masses. But Portland, dude, that’s in America (and I know most of my readers hail from the US of A). I also made nada special to bring with me. I knew vegan heaven was only a plane ride away.
Despite visiting for only a short weekend, I feel like I connected with Portland and the rest of Oregon. The city, even downtown, is green. Green in the lots of trees sense, and in the save the environment sense. Cycling is a culture and definitely safer than where I have lived previously. Vegans rejoice, as there are truly innumerable options for fun meals. Lucky me, many a vegan already visited Portland earlier this year (mostly for Vida Vegan Con) so I already knew where to hit up.
In brief, food: Canteen (our favourite restaurant of our trip, the Portland bowl was fabulous as well as the maca shake); Prasad (lovely soul salad and chai latte); Rawdacious raw cheesecake (found at Canteen); Raw Pixie Re’treats (loved the mock BLT and lil pudding; found at Kure and Food Fight); Kure Juice Bar (breakfast acai bowls and matcha latte); Missionary Chocolates (found at Living Room Theaters); the infamous Portobello restaurant (Rob’s lasagna was better than my portobello steak but the decadent ice cream sundae made up for it); vegan Mexican fare (with soy curls!) at Los Gorditos; Food Fight, an all vegan grocery store for some desert treats; Rob also had some Voodoo Doughnuts, but not the vegan ones (the Memphis Mafia was pretty epic, though [peanut butter, coconut and chocolate on top of a fritter as big as his head]) and lots of local brews for Rob
(more complete reviews can be found at Happy Cow)
In brief, non-food: Cyclepedia at the Portland Art Museum, Bike-A-Rama Bicycle Tour, watching indie films on a sofa at the Living Room Theater; Powell’s City of Books, early morning views of the city from Pittock Mansion and hiking in Forest Park (loved this!!). We also snuck in some shopping at REI and a downtown cycle store.
Who could guess we were only in Portland for less than 48 hours? Well, that’s the way we roll… bring on the awesomeness!
I have plans to recreate that delicious Portland bowl sauce but until then, I am sharing this delicious hummus-tzatziki fusion dip. We made it before we left and we made it when we returned. It is possibly our favourite non-classical hummus. Just like my strawberry-cucumber smoothie, cucumber adds an airy lightness to the dip which is countered by flax (trust me, you can’t taste it). Lots of garlic and bit of lemon juice makes this a great dip. Or spread. Or however you want to eat it. I won’t judge.
I still have many more places on my Portland hit-list, including Native Bowl, Natural Selection and Departure with their vegan menu, and that’s just the food list. Anything you recommend I see on my second trip to Portland? 🙂
PS. have you entered my giveaway for a copy of Moosewood Restaurant Favorites yet?
PPS. Hopefully we’ll have some photos up later this week.
This is my submission to this month’s My Legume Love Affair hosted by Swathi and to this month’s Credit Crunch Munch.
Have you heard of cronuts? Maybe the dosant? They are both spins on the same baked hybrid: a donut-like croissant. The original cronut wooed New York City. However, they take days to make and minutes to sell out. The lines are long and the prices are high. Since then, a few knock-off dosants have peppered North America.
In Houston, they can be found at Pena’s Donut Heaven in Pearland. When Rob discovered this, we had our next cycling destination picked. Turns out, while the cronut was not that fabulous, we’ve discovered our favourite cycling route in Houston, thus far. We’ve pedalled back 3 times already, enjoying the long, flat and straight road leading out of downtown Houston. Of course, Pena’s dosant is not vegan and I oftentimes get giggles from strangers as they see me snacking on an apple while Rob munches on his donut.
When we get home, though, I have been mixing up my own fabulous tropical smoothies. We’re working through different frozen fruit pulps. After our trip to Colombia, it was hard to find tropical frozen fruit (mamey, guanabanana, lulo, etc) in Toronto, but we snagged a bunch when we spotted it at Fiesta Mart. Mamey is still my favourite, but this simple guava smoothie was very good, too. Usually we just drink it and forget it, but this one I remade and photographed because I thought it was perfect to share. Frozen guava is combined with frozen banana, almond milk and ground flax seeds. The flax bulk up the smoothie making it more creamy. You may see the small flecks of brown but you can’t taste them.
Coming home to a cold drink is definitely the way to go in Houston. Do you have a favourite treat for hot weather?
This is my submission to this week’s Raw Food Thursdays.
You will have to forgive me. There may be a forthcoming onslaught of recipes using the dehydrator.
Towards the end of my move, the dehydrator was out in full force. Need travel snacks? Dehydrate them! Not sure what to do with random bits and bobs in the kitchen? Throw them together to get dehydrated. I quickly reconsidered my suggestion to move without the dehydrator. It suddenly made sense to bring it along for the ride.
I bookmarked this recipe because it promised to be better than Ritz crackers. It was also a fun way to sneak zucchini into a cracker along with walnuts, flax and hemp seeds. Unlike my previous savoury hemp crackers, I kept the flavours neutral. This way, they can equally be paired with homemade nutella, vanilla blueberry chia jam, vegan smoked salmon, rosemary cashew cheese, or a nacho cheese sauce. Or go even more travel friendly with a simple tomato and avocado.
These crackers were a bit salty for my tastes but they were somewhat reminiscent of Ritz crackers, in the way walnuts can be buttery. However, they were more coarse due to all the fun bits in it.
For those that do not have a dehydrator, these crackers can also be made baked. And I don’t mean with the oven going for 8 hours. See below for a baked option.
This is my submission to this month’s Bookmarked Recipes. Read the rest of this entry »
The dehydrator and juicer are now out in full force.
Carrots for juice and then the pulp was made into these lovely raw falafels.
I know, I said I don’t like raw Mediterranean eats. While I like Middle Eastern foods, I don’t like falafels.
However, I loved these raw carrot falafels.
Probably because they don’t taste like real falafels. And they don’t use raw chickpeas, either.
In any case, they taste great.
Carrots (or carrot pulp) is combined with sesame seeds along with lemon juice, garlic, cilantro and green onions for a flavour punch. Dehydrate them for 4 hours and you’ve got some soft and moist falafels without the heaviness from typical deep-dried falafel balls.
I combined the falafels with my favourite Middle Eastern-tahini dressing to date. Hummus-style with additional lemon juice, tamari and tahini. I originally used it in my Chickpea and Tofu Tahini Scramble but found the flavours mellowed after cooking on the stovetop. However, I stuck my finger in first to see how it tasted. I knew it would be a great dressing/dip and it did not disappoint.
I originally served the falafels and dressing as a salad overtop greens, but they also went really well in a green wrap with a bed of raw cauliflower couscous.
Don’t have a dehydrator? These could also be baked, according to Gena. Want to try your hand at another lovely baked quinoa falafel? Try these!
This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays and to this week’s Raw Food Thursday.
the taste space 