Gluten and Soy Free (!)

Not sure if our little Kyson has some allergies or what, but for one mere day I tried to be gluten and soy free in an effort to see if my milk is causing him issues. I failed miserably. The soy free part isn't too bad, and I think I can try that for a few weeks, but I love my carbs too much to give up the gluten.

However, having said that, I have made some fine stuff that meets both criteria!

First, a peanut butter cookie recipe from my friend - I'm guessing from 125 Best Gluten Free Recipes or something, since the font of my photocopy looks familiar to other 'Best' books. Made with amaranth flour, it really doesn't taste like a gluten free cookie! I love them!


Next, Coconut Curry Stew from Vegetarian Family Cookbook by Nava Atlas. Fab!


A suggested side to the stew, Fruity Couscous (I'm my case, quinoa) from the same cookbook. I think both of these meal items had a total of like 10 fruits and veggies - we nailed our 5-10 per day quota with this meal!


Finally, Strawberry Shortcake! I made Spongecake from the Allergen-Free Bakers Handbook. It was so fluffy and delicious - I thought it was quite surprising for something with no gluten. With vegan whipped cream and yummy strawberries, it felt like summer was here.

Six Degrees of Dessert...

So Kyle and I said we weren't going to eat dessert anymore...that didn't last long. Although I had fun using inspiration from one recipe to make the next dessert! Kevin Bacon, eat your heart out!

Lemon Cheesecake Bars from Martha Stewart were veganized to make the most delicious and easiest recipe. I think I used 1 cup of graham cracker crumbs, sugar and Earth Balance for the crust, then vegan soy cream cheese, 2 teaspoons egg replacer powder, 3/4 cup sugar and juice/rind of one lemon. My mom also tried making a lime version. Both are to die for. They would be really cute topped with a tiny lemon wedge or fancy rind, but I was too lazy for that.

On the lemon theme, I made the Coconut Lemon Bundt Cake from Vcon for mamma's day. I've made it before, but this time I topped it with a lemon glaze. One of my fave recipes.

From Vcon again, I made the Vanilla Yogurt Pound Cake. Omigod. So spongy! The best vegan angel food cake-like recipe I've found! Yum!

Eager to make the pound cake again, I did but switched it up to be a trifle using cubes of pound cake, vanilla custard, strawberries tossed with maple syrup, and Soyatoo whipped topping. Even my grandma gave me positive comments! I think she is on the vegan bandwagon...finally! She's come a long way from trying to persuade me to eat a porkchop because it's 'really tender' and to eat a salad that has chicken because 'it's just chicken'.

To use up extra maple syrupy strawberries, I made a Coconut Ice Cream from a recent VT issue. It was a little icy.

Eager to use up the ice cream, we picked some fresh rhubarb to make Fresh Rhubarb Parfaits from a recent VT (maybe the same issue as the ice cream? Can't remember!). The combo of orange and ginger was amazing. I threw in a few strawberries for extra sweetness, although it really didn't need it.

Skinny B*tch Rocks!

So I got a few new cookbooks from the library. I know it's not new or anything, but I got Skinny B*tch in the Kitch, as I never realized it is a vegan cookbook. I guess you have to be familiar with the preceding book or something, as nowhere on the cover does it suggest anything about vegan cooking! Anyways, despite it's lack of inspiring photos plus the fact that some recipes tell me I'm being a pig, I decided to give some recipes a try.

First up - Pecan-crusted French Toast. Eerily similar to Fronch Toast (which I love!), the addition of pecans is genius. And they actually stick! I'll definitely be making this one again.


I've been craving some tabouleh lately, and I found an easy recipe in here! I've never made it before, so maybe this recipe isn't so ground-breaking, but I never knew you just had to add boiling water to bulgur! I do have to say that I would have liked for the bulgur to have been more tender.

And Kyle and I have been meaning to eat more salads. The Edamame Three-Bean Salad was so easy and tasty. It only would have been more colourful had I had enough red pepper and red kidney beans (I subbed black beans). I'll be making this one again during the summer for sure!

And while it's in the appetizer section, I served up Crabby Crabcakes on top of the suggested spinach with the lemony dressing from Vcon. Now I've never had crab before, but the shredded parsnips in this tasted so darn good! I loved these! And since I made so many, I had lots of shaped cakes ready to be fried for the next night, making for a very easy dinner prep. As for the sauce, I didn't have the time nor all of the ingredients for the remoulade recipe, so I just mixed up some Nayonaise with ketchup and a dash of onion powder instead.

Still on the appetizer route, I had to make the onion rings. I can't tell you the last time I ate these, since we've never made them at home and I would worry that most restaurants would fry them up in oil used for fish, etc. These were great! I'll just be sure to use a finer grind of cornmeal (it wasn't specified in the recipe) and I'll be sure to buy a white onion next time.

Ah...dessert. We're supposed to be on a dessert strike, but I couldn't resist. And besides, this next recipe is so healthy - it's not even in the dessert section! When I saw the recipe for Homemade Granola Parfait I thought, 'meh, another boring granola recipe'. But I kept an open mind and made it anyways. This recipe is brilliant - I've never put brown rice syrup in my granola and boy, have I been missing something! It makes it so crunchy and adds a touch of sweetness - nothing like the maple syrup alone that I've been using for so many years! It was delicious with vanilla soy yogurt and yummy strawberries.

Well, since I made and served dessert one night, I had to do it again! I was also craving rice pudding, so I had to make that too. Now since there's only Kyle and I eating this, I didn't want to store the leftovers in a casserole dish so that next time we went to get a serving, we'd carve out a thickened hunk to put in a bowl. So I decided to throw the finished rice pudding in a pre-made vegan shortbread pie crust. After chilling in the fridge, it firmed up nicely enough to serve - and subsequent servings were still pretty and tasty! While it was a good healthy recipe with brown rice, I found it to be not quite 'saucy' enough, so I'll stick with my other recipe that is more creamy with soy yogurt. But I'll stick with this way of serving it from now on since it is also a 'thick' recipe versus the runnier rice pudding I had as a kid.



Finally, Dream Bars. I had scanned this recipe several times since it had so much stuff in it, and such a weird topping of coconut milk that I had a hard time envisioning how it would look and taste. While this pic doesn't do it justice, as I was supposed to let it cool a little more, it was heavenly. It made a whole 9x13 pan, so if you make this, make sure you do it when you will have lots of people around to help you out. You won't be a skinny b*tch if you eat this all by yourself, like the book suggests. Plus, you may want to mini-barf, as Kyle did when he set out to eat about 1/4 of the pan in one sitting.

All in all, a great little book! I'll definitely be buying my own copy of this one since it had so many standard and neat little recipes!

Easy Recipe Alert!

A nice twist on the quesadilla front...sweet Strawberry Chocolate Quesadillas! I pulled this from a Moosewood Restaurant cookbook (Moosewood Celebrates or something like that). Made it for the weekly mom’s group get-together. Sweet, sinful and messy. A great way to use up seasonal strawberries! OK, next post will actually be something nutritious and meal-like...

The All-You-Can-Grab Buffet

Here's my contribution to the housewarming that we went to on the weekend. VWAV's Tofu Dill Salad Sammiches:



As Sarah described, as soon as they hit the buffet table they were being gobbled up by the obviously starving omni crowd. This wasn't the venue for extolling the virtues of vegan food, it was the kinda time and place where you grabbed what you could and growled at anyone who looked longingly at your plate. The omnis didn't even use plates, so the vegans had to forage for what they could.

Considerably less attractive than Sarah's stellar dessert were the Pumpkin Pie Brownies that I made.



But I really enjoyed the pumpkin-chocolate combo - the spicy pumpkin really set off the rich chocolate base.

For my Vwav challenge, we had One Night in Bangkok (well, two) - I made both the Brooklyn Pad Thai and the Thai Green Curry;



(The pad thai photos got lost in cyberspace. Or camera space. There's only one terribly blurry photo left. I won't make you dizzy.)

I went with tamarind in the pad thai sauce vs the lime juice. I think next time I'll try half of each, for extra extra flavour. I really liked the dish. For the curry, I'll throw in more veggies next time, like broccoli and maybe carrots. Thai restaurants always serve those fancy-cut carrots. I don't know how to do that.

On the Doorstep

Our first CSA box of the season arrived!



It was so much fun to see what was hiding under there - the box contained a bag of baby greens, a huge bunch of green swiss chard, red swiss chard, a GIANT head of romaine lettuce, half a daikon, one sweet beet, one red beet, 8 snow peas, a small bunch of mint and cilantro, seven stalks of rhubarb and two big green onions. For dinner we had a stirfry and for dessert, rhubarb crumble (as suggested by Sarah). I used slivered almonds instead of ground as that's what I had. The dish was really tart, but good! I would have loved to top it with a scoop of vanilla soy ice cream, but we were out :(

This week, we'll be eating LOTS of salad.

*For anyone in Ottawa, the contact info for the CSA is:
Tim and Roshan Aubin
613-658-5721
aubinfarm@aol.com

Green and Brown

Our raw diet experiment is going extremely very well for us. Although I haven't lost any more pounds to date, I feel fantastic and energized. And I've become addicted to these for breakfast:



It's Green Lemonade. The recipe is from The Raw Food Detox Diet, which I borrowed from the library. I'm still trying to decide if it's worth buying, as it has some really good salad dressing recipes, but some other ideas that are kinda out there for my too-logical mind (colonics anyone? rebounders?). Anyway, to make Green Lemonade, juice a head of romaine lettuce, a few stalks of celery (or any other combination of greens), a lemon (no need to peel), and two apples. Tomorrow I'm going to attempt a Green Smoothie using my regular $20 blender. We're still pondering the really-expensive Vitamix, although most Green Smoothie makers on the internets seem to sing it's praises.

And as far as desserts, we're covered. These are Raw Brownies from Raw Food Talk (Alissa Cohen's discussion board).



They are topped with the MOST AWESOME vegan chocolate pudding ever. And it's raw to boot. I used cocoa powder (I'm still cleaning out the pantry) and only 1/2 cup of regular agave nectar. I made it again, in Chocolate Monkey form.



I would like to say that I made this just for Princess, but no, adults like to play with their food too.

And although I'm not normally one for liberally sprinkling the blog with gratuitous pet photos, I had to show our youngest waiting patiently for a slice of banana.

Trumpets and Mousse

Last night I got one more dish from VwaV under my belt - Asparagus and Sun-dried Tomato Frittata.



I doubled the recipe as we had lots of asparagus and two pounds of tofu to use up, and a larger-than-called-for skillet. It was really impressive, and much more flavourful than I thought it would be. Princess had a hard time with the nutritional yeast taste, but at least ate all the asparagus.

Tonight I wanted to use some pasta that I got on sale in the health food section at Loblaws called Veggie Trumpets, as well as use up other leftovers. I sauteed red onion slices, garlic and mushrooms in olive oil, then added 1/2 cup red wine and a few handfuls of spinach, 1/2 can of diced tomatoes and a cube of frozen basil. Tossed with the cooked trumpets, it came out like this.



And for dessert, Chocolate Mousse from the September VegNewsletter.