Carrot Muffins and Linkage!

Because I can't bear to post without pictures, here are some of yummy Carrot Raisin Muffins from Vegan with a Vengeance. This was the first time I've made these. I don't know why I skipped them for so long. The VWAV muffins are my very favorite muffins to make. Yum! For some reason I expected these muffins to be super sweet like carrot cake, but - they were very nice and breakfasty, not cupcakey at all. The muffins I ate the next day were awesome cut in half, toasted lightly in the toaster oven and smeared with Earth Balance. Sooo good.

And even if you eat like 6 of them in one sitting, you can just tell yourself how great it is that you're eating so many carrots while you're doing it. Because we all know that carrots are good for you. So how can you go wrong?

Now for the getting down to business portion of the program. I need to add some links! Because I am quite forgetful and potentially distracted by shiny objects, give me a comment if you're not in my links and would like to be. :D Or you can just comment to tell me how freaking cute alpacas are. Because they are. Yes they are!!! Stop it. You're wrong. They're cute, so there. I knew you'd see it my way.

Kitties!

There are so many pictures of my cat, Piper, on the blog. I do have two other cats, so I wanted to show them being cute, too. Whenever I'm cooking, Piper loves to be in the kitchen. She usually sits on the top of the refrigerator and watches me. Sometimes she jumps down and tries to help, too. ;)

The other two pretty much decide to go in the living room and be as cute as possible in hopes that I'll leave the kitchen and give them lots of pets. It's a tried and true cat method. I mean, seriously. How could you resist this?

Or this?

:D And I wanted to share how beautiful Vancouver is in the spring. These pictures are from two weeks ago. If you can imagine, there are actually more trees bursting with blossoms now. It's amazingly beautiful. Even the air smells fragrant in some places.

Check me out. Two posts in one day! :D

Strawberry and Mango Cobbler

Some days I binge on Food Network. I actually really like Food Network Canada better than the programming in the states. Rock on, Canadia! (Yes, I did mean to spell it that way. :P) One of the shows I enjoy the most is Chef at Home. The cool thing about Michael Smith is that he's actually trying to teach people how to combine flavors and how to cook. Even when you look up one of his recipes on the website, he prefaces it with this:

"A recipe is merely words on paper; a guideline, a starting point from which to improvise. It cannot pretend to replace the practiced hand and telling glance of a watchful cook. For that reason feel free to stir your own ideas into this dish. When you cook it once, it becomes yours, so personalize it a bit. Add more of an ingredient you like or less of something you don't like. Try substituting one ingredient for another. Remember words have no flavour, you have to add your own!"

Awesomeness. So anyway, I'm watching his show one day and he's making this amazing strawberry and mango cobbler. Holy crap, yum! And then he did something really cool that I had never thought of before. Instead of melting margarine and mixing it in the dough, and instead of cutting in small cold pieces of margarine, he froze the dang stick and grated it in! What a freaking awesome idea. I think this could work for biscuits and other stuff like that. Especially if you don't have a pastry blender or if you get annoyed by trying to use one. I had some Earth Balance sticks that I just stuck in the freezer for whenever I felt like making something like this.

So after scribbling down the recipe (okay, who am I kidding. The OCD part of SaraJane wrote it down neatly in my cooking journal), I was kind of excited about trying this new technique with the EB. I was going to just substitute some of the fruit for others and THEN the market across the street from work put cases of mangos on sale for $7.99. Oh hell, yes. I totally carried that box of mangos home on the bus. Heh. That was kind of funny, I have to admit. Mangos are my all-time favorite food, so I was stoked. After forcing myself to stop eating nothing but mangos for days, I managed to save a few to cut up for this cobbler.

He used frozen fruit on the show. I froze mine and then had to thaw them out to use them. They were so juicy, I sort of had a block of mango in the freezer. Between the freezing and thawing and baking, they sort of liquified. Weird, right? They're still fine and the cobbler still tastes really good, but it looks a little weird. I guess either use frozen or fresh, but don't thaw the frozen ones.

Strawberry and Mango Cobbler

2 cups fresh or frozen strawberries
2 cups fresh or frozen mango
1/2 cup cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 cup flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
2 tbsp sugar
Pinch of salt
1/2 tbsp baking powder
1/2 cup margarine, frozen (one stick of Earth Balance is 1/2 cup)
1/2 cup soy milk


Preheat your oven to 375°F. Place fruit into a large bowl and toss well with the flour, sugar and lemon juice. Put the fruit mixture into a baking dish. I used one of those square pyrex ones. It's best if the fruit fills the dish but doesn't rise above the edges. You don't want to get hot bubbly fruit running over the edge of the dish as it cooks.

For the topping, stir together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt and baking powder. Grate in the frozen margarine and mix the dough together with either a wooden spoon or your fingers.

Pour in the soy milk and stir until mixture comes together and forms a rough dough. It'll be a bit dry, but that's what you want. Either use a spoon or your fingers and put the dough in pieces over the fruit, covering the entire top evenly.

Bake for 45 minutes.

Things That Are Awesome: Green & Black's Hot Chocolate

I've decided to start a semi-regular thing on my blog. Things that are awesome. Frequently I find gadgets or yummy packaged foods that I think everyone should know about. First up - chocolatey yumminess.

I have a love affair with Green & Black's chocolates. They're all fair trade and organic and almost all of them are vegan. You have seriously never tasted chocolate this amazing. You don't want to chew it, just put little pieces in your mouth and let it melt on your tongue. It's really unfair to yourself to eat it faster than that. Plus, the chocolate lasts a little longer that way because you'll end up eating less each time.

Green & Black's is a UK company and they have some flavors across the pond that we can't get over here. I've actually had a friend of mine from over there send me some because she knew how much I like it. And let me say this, too: I'm not a chocolate fiend. I don't eat chocolate very often, I have to be in the mood for it. I'm more of a salty craving gal. Give me some fries or plain potato chips or Tings over chocolate any day. Unless you're going to offer me some Green & Black's.

Loving Green & Black's the way I do, I was intrigued when I saw that they had hot chocolate. I actually found this the first time in the drug store. Sometimes it pays to walk down an aisle randomly. I never ever buy hot chocolate because I'm rather partial to the way I make it from scratch. It's so easy to do it yourself and hot chocolate mixes always pale in flavor in comparison to homemade. Until now!

Check out what it looks like, too. This is no wimpy powdered mix, this is little tiny pieces of chocolate. You know what else is awesome? If you ever wish you could have hot chocolate when you're not at home, you can use this. Get some of those little single servings thingies of soy milk and keep them at work along with this and you can have a nice afternoon snack.

I actually really like to cut up some Sweet & Sara marshmallows and let them swim around in the chocolateyness. That is a fantastic way to give yourself some dessert after dinner without eating those last 3 cupcakes that are calling your name.

Even Piper wants some!

Lentil Chili

I know, chili again, so soon? Well, yeah. And this one is even easier than the last one. I've never had chili made with lentils before I tried this recipe. I was a little skeptical at first. I thought it might end up tasting just like lentil soup or something. But no!

I know there are a lot of haters out there when it comes to omni food magazines. I, however, am not one of those people. I've been subscribing to Bon Appetit for over 10 years. Continuously almost, too. And you know what? I've been vegetarian or vegan for the entire time (and then some. ;) ). I've gotten some really great recipes and ideas for different ways to prepare foods that I might not have thought of on my own. I absolutely love food. I love to try some of the trendy flavor groupings and make some really "gourmet" feeling food sometimes. My brain just automatically skips over the stuff that I find gross or just substitutes tofu or seitan in the place of meat in recipes.

But I digress. Why am I yammering on about food magazines? Because that's where I found this lentil chili recipe, that's why! Specifically from Bon Appetit's Green Issue (February 2008). It was even already vegan, I didn't have to substitute a thing. And that's pretty darn cool. (Though I must say, I'm unsure why they felt the need to add the "with Cumin" part to the recipe name. That's kinda weird since most chili has that in the first place.)

Don't be fooled by the minimal ingredients. I almost added a few more things as I was cooking, but then I was glad I didn't. I think the simplicity of the ingredients is what makes the flavors really shine.

Lentil Chili with Cumin and Green Onions

2 tsp olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tbsp chili powder
1 Tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried oregano leaves
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper (add more to make it hotter)
4 cups (or more) water
1 cup dried brown lentils, rinsed (I used green ones)
1/2 cup tomato puree
1/3 cup plus 2 Tbsp chopped green onions

Heat oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion and saute for 2 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for another 30 seconds. Add chili powder, cumin, oregano leaves, and cayenne pepper; stir for 30 seconds. Add the 4 cups of water, lentils, and tomato puree. Increase the heat and bring to a boil, skimming off any foam from the surface. Reduce heat to medium and simmer until lentils are tender, adding more water by 1/4 cupfuls as needed if dry, about 30 minutes. Stir in 1/3 cup green onions. Season chili to taste with salt and pepper.

Divide the chili among 4 bowls. Sprinkle with remaining green onions and serve.

Apples - Two Ways!

I'm a huge fan of baked apple desserts. Sometimes I just cut up some apples, sprinkle them with cinnamon and stick them in the oven just like that. Sorta ghetto-style baked apples.

I have been loving the Apple Galettes from Veganomicon. I've made them bunches of times, though I didn't make them into hearts. Sorta little cracked-out ovals, actually. But they taste yummy! I tried using some different jam flavors one time even. The apricot is the best, plum jam is also pretty damn good. It adds a different bent to the flavor, which is nice if you want to make the same thing, but jazz it up a little bit. Did I mention they're really easy to make? Pretty quick, too.

Speaking of easy things that are yummy... I made a fantastic apple crisp last week. They had these huge local apples at the market, so I bought a ton of them for baking. Apple crisps are great because you don't have to deal with making any dough like pies and cobblers. The topping doesn't really get solidified until you bake it, so it's easy to spread it over the entire top of your apples. And - like you'd expect, the topping is crisp! It's a nice compliment to the softness of the apples.

Some things I want to mention about the apple part of the recipe in case you're wanting to substitute or just put naked apples under the topping: The flour has a cool purpose. I swear! I only just discovered this, so I wanted to make sure to share it. If you toss your fruit with flour before using it for a pie or cobbler or whatever, it'll start to mix with the fruit juices as it cooks. Suddenly you have a nice thick sauce hanging out. It's awesome - try it!

Apple Crisp of Awesomeness

1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar or demerra sugar
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp salt
6 Tbsp non-hydrogenated margarine, like Earth Balance
1/3 cup rolled oats (not the instant kind)
1/4 cup chopped pecans, optional
4 large granny smith apples, peeled and chopped
1 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp lemon juice

Preheat your oven to 375 F.

Get a pie dish or one of those square baking dishes, lightly grease the bottom and sides. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Cut in the margarine with a pastry blender or a fork until the mixture is clumpy and there are pea-sized lumps. Stir in the rolled oats and pecans. Set that aside while you deal with the apples.

In a large bowl, stir together the apples and 1 Tablespoon flour until all of the apples are lightly coated. Put the apples into the baking dish. Now drizzle the lemon juice over the apples. Pour on the topping, trying to get it evenly over all of the apples. Don't worry that it's still pretty loose, it's supposed to be like that.

Bake for 35 minutes. Make sure to let it cool for 5-10 minutes after it comes out of the oven. You want the sauce and topping to set a little and cool off a bit. Serve this with some Soyatoo or soy ice cream if you want. Enjoy!

I've Been Tagged!

I know, I know. I'm a bad blogger. Things have been a little crazy inside my head lately, but I should be able to get back to a normal cycle of posting two or three times a week now. I have a ton of pictures and recipes in my arsenal ready to post. Some of the stuff I've been waiting to talk about. I got 3 new cookbooks in the past few months and I really wanted to review each one. The problem is that I've found some recipes that either came out terribly or I just don't like the results. I really want to like these particular cookbooks and I don't want to say anything bad, so I'm going to try another recipe or two from each of them before any reviews. So then maybe it won't be so bad if there are 3 recipes I made and I liked 2 of them.

Now here is a picture of a blueberry muffin from last weekend. (Recipe from Yellow Rose Recipes.)

So, Vegan Mother tagged me. I've never been tagged before, I feel so special! Not that I really have anything all that exciting to say, but here we go:

Here's how it works...I tell you 5 things about myself, then tag 5 other people via their blog. Sounds fun, right?? Here goes:

1. I have a pretty cool job - I'm a texture and shading artist for 3D animated films.
2. I didn't start college until I was 23. (though I'm into the next decade now. ;) )
3. 3 cats have me. They're all rescues, though they continually rescue me every day.
4. I'm from the US, but I live in Canada right now.
5. I am the walrus. Koo koo ka choo

I am tagging....

Bazu - Where's the Revolution
Kittee - Cake Maker to the Stars
Lindy Loo - Yeah, That "Vegan" Shit
Melisser - The Urban Housewife
Dynise - The Urban Vegan


Rules:
Link to your tagger and post these rules.
Share 5 facts about yourself.
Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.