Happy Easter! (And a Little Market Research Favour...)

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter with food, family and friends. We had a great time!

As I described in a previous post, I made a few yummy things...

Fronch Toast - from Isa's Vegan with a Vengeance book. I used all flour instead of some of the chickpea flour called for since we have to be legume-free. Turned out great as always! Annoyed with myself since I made homemade raspberry and strawberry sauces that I forgot to put out with the maple syrup...argh.  Served with Buttah, which I will blog about shortly!

Smoky Maple Sausages - from Isa's Vegan Brunch recipe. Used my own seitan. Turned out ok - I think I forgot to add salt and maybe I would have preferred more of a sauce with them? I have no idea how regular sausages are even served.

Fruit Flowers - This was pretty last minute. I ran out of time! I had visions of something even more grand!

Bakery Style Berry Muffins - Tasted perfect! Kyson was stealing these from unsuspecting guests' plates.

Potato Spinach Squares - also from Isa's Vegan Brunch. Others liked it, I thought it was ok.

Hash Browns - I loved these ones! From Isa's Vegan Brunch. I love these! I only have one nonstick muffin pan, and after using a regular ol' muffin pan, we quickly realized I will need to invest in a second nonstick one if we decide to double the recipe again.

Quinoa Salad - cooked quinoa, grape tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, cilantro and parsley with Farm Boy Lemon Garlic dressing. Easy! Was yummy!

Carrot Cupcakes - Chickened out using the recipe from VCTOTW since I was nervous about subbing for the soy yogurt. Used a recipe from Happy Herbivore. Found them to be dough-y and gummy and stuck all over the muffin papers. Should have asked my MIL to make them since she does a way better job. Looked pretty though! Ash took charge of the coloured icing detail.  Here they are in their cute little basket wraps and then with the homemade tempered-Enjoy Life chocolate chunk Easter eggs (mold and wrappers from Bulk Barn).

Punch - bottled organic lemon juice and lime juice, two small bottles of POM, 1 bottle sparkling water, a few glugs of agave nectar and OJ. No pic :(

Takeaway - everyone got sugar cookies - making the icing was fun...spinach, turmeric, beet and blueberries were used. So pretty! Can't stand the thought of artificial colours. I enlisted the help of Ash and her older cousin Princess to decorate them all! Didn't get pics of that though.

So I think it went well.

Oh, doing a little market research - please comment if you are from Ottawa...any interest in vegan/soy free/peanut free/tree nut free cupcakes for events? I promise I wouldn't get Ash to decorate them :)  Awhile ago, I had thought about doing this on the side, but after being sidelined with the whack of allergies, I had to put it on the back burner.  Now that I've mastered this allergy stuff, I can make stuff taste great and even appeal to whoever else might need some stuff that's safe for those with soy, peanut or tree nut allergies.

And for those in Ottawa or outside of Ottawa (I can mail these puppies)...what about an order of vegan/soy free/peanut free/tree nut free/ refined sugar free/ridiculously healthy yet so yummy cookies as a great snack for work or packing in school lunches? Each cookie features a whopping 7g of protein, is chock full of fibre, packed with omegas, and contains 20% of the RDV of iron? I've developed them to serve as a meal replacement for my picky toddler. Will post more info soon, but hoped to gauge interest :). Thanks in advance!

An Old Friend

I made my absolute favourite comfort food that came from my own imagination the other night for probably the hundredth time when I realized that I had never posted the recipe here. I did post something *really* similar, but not exactly the same. Since we've lightened our diet, I make this with brown rice pasta.



Sundried Tomato Spinach Artichoke Pasta

1 tblsp oil from julienned oil-packed sundried tomatoes, or olive oil if using dry sundried tomatoes
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup sundried tomatoes packed in oil, or dried then reconstituted sundried tomatoes
3/4 cup red wine
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
2 huge handfuls of baby spinach, or chopped spinach
1 can quartered artichoke hearts
1 can chickpeas, drained

1 box brown rice pasta, cooked

Heat oil in wok. Saute garlic for a couple of minutes. Add sundried tomatoes and saute for a few minutes more. Add wine, vinegar and spinach and cook until spinach is slightly wilted. Add artichoke hearts and chickpeas and heat through. Add drained pasta and mix together. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

I always make this when I don't know what to make, as I usually have everything in the pantry, and spinach in the fridge. Except for that E coli episode - that was painful.

Isn't She Loaf-ly?

A while back, I had to buy a new breadmaker. My old Proctor-Silex model was sadly kaput after years of overuse, and had to be replaced. Last summer, Canadian Tire had a good sale on a popular model, so I caved - grudgingly. It took me a good two months to even be able to put my old breadmaker out at the curb. I mainly used the dough cycle, but once, I decided to test out the whole 'horizontal' loaf thing with one of my whole wheat recipes. I didn't have time to wait a long time, so without reading the instructions, I used the 'rapid bake' cycle. The loaf did not turn out well. It was very lopsided. I thought this had something to do with the fact that I used a 1 1/2 pound recipe for a 2 pound machine, so I made a note to self to follow the instructions for the larger loaf next time.

So next time rolled around last night. At 8pm, I decided to make me a loaf of bread. I followed the instructions in my cookbook for the 2 pound version, and got all set to turn on the bread machine. I then remembered that I had to select a setting. That's when I pulled out the cryptic breadmaker instructions (worst instructions ever). I then read that I can only use the 'rapid bake' cycle (1 hour 10 minutes) for ONLY the recipes in the book (of which there are two). I guess that's a useless cycle! My only other option was the 'grain' setting (4 hours 10 minutes). As it was already after 8pm, there was no way that I was going to wait until after midnight to pull that sucker out of the machine to avoid it getting soggy. So I used the delay timer (again, I was reminded at how crappy the instructions were), and decided to set it for 6am this morning.

I was eagerly anticipating my loaf - after all, I used the proper amount of ingredients (2 pound recipe) and the correct setting ('grain' instead of 'rapid bake'). When I woke up this morning, I could smell the faint scent of fresh bread. I opened my bedroom door and ran downstairs to find this:

I may have well just used the 'rapid bake' setting with the darn 1 1/2 pound recipe as the results were nearly the same :(

While on a bread kick, I decided to try a recipe that piqued my curiosity a few weeks ago. I have never tried one of those spinach dips served in a pumpernickel loaf, but found a vegan spinach dip recipe in Extraveganza that didn't seem to call for any hydrogenated Tofutti products. It sounded good! So I mixed this up for a snack, but it turned into my dinner.

It was pretty darn good! I tried serving it (to myself - so sad) in the carved out loaf, but I think my ratio of loaf to dip was off, so it didn't seem very full. Ah well - it tasted good. I can't wait to get nice and close to the co-workers tomorrow, as this recipe had three cloves of garlic.

Speaking of co-workers, they might overlook my hideous breath - I had extra filling leftover from my first batch of Boston Cream Cupcakes, so I made a second batch. I'm bringing some into work tomorrow to try and improve my popularity among the team (and partially because I don't want to get stuck at home alone with 12 cupcakes). The icing was a bit runnier today...come to think of it - maybe I should taste-test one from this batch...I'll go do that now. I was just about to get on the elliptical anyways...

I've Redeemed Myself!

Was I ever thrilled to fill my cannister with oats! On to Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies - Round 2.

After last night's fiasco, I rushed to the grocery store to grab the missing ingredient to re-attempt the cookies. I got home at 5:13. I threw the ingredients together (I even measured carefully - which I normally never do, but I wasn't taking any chances for another screw up), and tossed them in the oven at 5:29. I even made sure my oven thermometer read the required 350 degrees. 18 minutes later (2 minutes longer than the recommended baking time, under my watchful eye), the cookies were out. By 5:55, they were cooling on a rack, and looked MUCH better than last night's creation, although still different from my first batch. I honestly didn't care, as I could at least feel confident bringing these puppies into work.

I was supposed to be over at Tracy's by 5:45 to babysit Princess, but I didn't there until 6. I always seem to be 15 minutes late for everything. Fortunately, dinner was ready for me! Hooray! Tracy made this yummy recipe from Lorna Sass' Complete Vegetarian Kitchen. It's a spinach-chickpea-sundried tomato risotto recipe that's made in minutes in the pressure cooker. Definitely one of my faves.