Pumpkin Granola

Happy Fall! I kicked off the season with a baking spree this weekend.  First on my list was pumpkin granola.  I've made granola before, using nuts and fruit and all kinds of delicious--but expensive--ingredients.  This recipe, from Two Peas and Their Pod, is very simple and inexpensive, and, unlike many recipes, pretty healthy! 

First, mix together the wet ingredients: pumpkin, applesauce, maple syrup, and vanilla.

Then, mix together the dry ingredients: oats, spices, salt, and sugar.

Next, pour the wet ingredients over the dry and mix together until moistened. 

Fingers make great mixers. This would be a lot of fun for a little kid.

Spread out the mixture on a foil or wax paper lined baking sheet and bake in a warm (325 degrees) oven for 40 minutes, mixing up the granola half way through baking. 

The granola should be starting to get crispy.  Don't worry if it is still moist, it will dry out and gain some crunch as it cools.  Stir in dried cranberries, and let cool completely.

This granola is great.  It's easy to make, healthy, and inexpensive.  What more could you want?  Oh, and it tastes awesome.  I plan to eat it with yogurt, but so far I've been too busy eating it out of the jar. 

Sweet Potato and Beet Hash Browns

 

With the rest of my beets, I decided to make beet hash browns.  Again, here I essentially treated the beets as potatoes, and actually mixed them with some sweet potatoes.  I started with one sweet potato and two beets:

 

To make the hash browns, I chopped the potatoes and beets into approximately 1/2 inch pieces and sauted them in a pan with olive oil, onion, salt and pepper until soft.

I ate them with fried eggs.  These sweet potato and beet hash browns were heavier than normal potato hash browns, but had a ton of visual interest and interesting texture.  I thought this was a great way to use up some beets.  But beware, this makes a lot of food. Hope you're hungry!

Mini quiche

 

In college I made quiche all the time.  It was an easy dish to prepare that felt homey and classy all at once.  I have not made quiche since college, and decided it was time to try again.  Only this time I made mini quiche using a muffin tin. I found the recipe through food gawker.  You can find it here.

The first step was to prepare the crusts.  I used a store bought (gasp!) pie crust, mostly because it was on sale. I used a plastic cup dipped in flour to cut out circles of pie crust. 

 

Then, I rolled them out a little thinner and placed them into a greased muffin tin, as you would with paper liners.  I found that 1 9" pie crust is enough to make 12 mini crusts. While I prepared the filling, I placed the tray in the refrigerator to keep the crusts cool.

 

For the filling, the first step was to saute onions in olive oil until translucent.  You'd think I would have come up with a more creative way to photograph this by now...

 

Then, I mixed the cooked onions  with eggs, cheese, defrosted frozen spinach, milk, and nutmeg.

 

 Next I spooned the mixture into the crusts.  I had some filling leftover, which I baked in a small baking dish alongside the mini quiche.

Finally, I baked the quiche in the oven for about 20 minutes.  When they came out they had pooofed up.

 

But after cooling, they deflated and looked very cute, in my opinion at least.  Overall, these quiche were pretty good.   As a single person, though, you can only eat so much quiche before getting tired of it.  Many of these ended up in the freezer.  I do not know yet how well quiche freeze.  My guess is not that well. This would be a great recipe to save and bring to a brunch or picnic.

Cinnamon Toast

 

One of my favorite breakfasts growing up was cinnamon toast.  My mom would make it for me and my brothers. It is a wonderful breakfast treat that is surprisingly easy to make. The first step is to spread butter on bread.  Here I used real butter and store-bought wheat bread. My mom always uses real butter when baking, so I try to do the same. You can use any type of bread. Next, sprinkle on cinnamon and sugar.

To toast the bread, broil it on high for just a few minutes.  Watch the toast carefully, as it cooks very quickly and can easily burn.  Two of the pieces in the picture below are a little burnt, or, as I like to think of it, a little crunchy.

Carrot Zucchini Muffins

After my vegan week was over, I still had some vegetables leftover from my wonderful aunt's farmer's market spree. Since I had not ventured into vegan baking, I was craving some muffins. I ended up making carrot zucchini muffins, using this recipe that I found online.

The recipe started off like any other muffin recipe.  Mix together the standard dry ingredients: whole wheat flour, all purpose flour, baking soda, and spices.

Then, mix together the wet ingredients: oil, sugar, egg, and applesauce, grated carrots and grated zucchini.  I did not have applesauce, so instead I used a mashed banana plus milk to make 3/4 cups.

Next, combine the wet and dry ingredients just until everything is moistened.  If you mix for too long, too much gluten will develop and your muffins will become chewy. Who wants chewy muffins?

Spoon the batter into 12 greased muffin tins and bake in a 400 degree oven until lightly browned and a toothpick comes out clean.

And voila, muffins that cover all five food groups!  For carbs we have flour; for fruit there is a banana; for vegetables we have zucchini and carrots; for protein there is an egg; for dairy there is milk (in my version at least); and for fats there is a little oil.  What a well-balanced muffin!  Despite all of the healthy ingredients, it was also quite tasty.  It had a great muffin texture as well.

 

I liked this recipe so much that I recommended it to my brother.  He was apparently in a hurry when he made it, though, and forgot to add the baking powder, spices, and salt.  Without baking powder, baked goods just won't rise.  Needless to say, his muffins were a failure.  Make sure to read recipes carefully and follow directions!

Vegan Week Recap--Breakfasts

Good Morning!  After a crazy week, I finally have a chance to recap my vegan week, which ended this Monday.  I ended up trying a lot of new recipes during the week, so I have a lot of pictures to post. I figured why not start with the best meal of the day: breakfast.  So, as of my last post on Thursday I had only had overnight oats for breakfast.  Now, of course there's nothing wrong with overnight oats, but I was getting a little bored eating the same thing for breakfast every day, so I decided to mix it up.

First up is traditional oatmeal--eaten hot off the stove.  This variety has dried cranberries and fresh bananas on top:

 

Next up is rhubarb applesauce.  When I was little, my mom and I would go to the local orchard and buy bushels of apples to make applesauce.  I came to my applesauce idea from a different approach.

I was at WholeFoods and saw rhubarb.  I thought to myself, wow, I've never actually tried rhubarb.  That would be a fun new food for vegan week.  So, I bought a few stalks.  After way too much thinking and debating over what to make with my rhubarb,  I decided to make rhubarb applesauce and bought a few apples as well. 

 

The recipe for my applesauce came from one of my favorite food blogs: Two Peas and Their Pod.  It is very simple.  First you chop up apples and rhubarb in a 2-1 ratio.  Two cups of apples per cup of rhubarb.

 

Then, you put them in a pot on the stove with a little bit of water, and cook until mushy (about half an hour).  You can also add sugar if you'd like.  I added just a couple of tablespoons of raw sugar, and found that my applesauce was very sweet.  I think next time I will taste the applesauce before adding any sugar. 

 

The next and final step is one for preference.  If you like chunky applesauce, then just stir in a little cinnamon, and your applesauce is ready to go.  If you prefer smoother applesauce like I do, then run it through a blender, or use a stick blender to pulverize the chunks of apples and rhubarb. Then, add a little cinnamon, and your applesauce is ready.

The recipe says to enjoy the applesauce at room temperature or refrigerated.  I tasted the applesauce as it was cooling on the stove and found it delicious warm.  In fact, I had a bowl full before the sauce cooled enough to put away in the fridge.  

This recipe was a great success.  It was fast, easy, and fun.  Who wouldn't want to eat hot pink applesauce??

And finally, my third new vegan breakfast recipe was crepes.  The recipe came from my Skinny Bitch cookbook.  I'm sure you're not surprised. The first step was to mix up the batter.  I don't want to give away all of the recipes in the cookbook, so I'll leave this one a mystery.  From my memory, though, it involved almond milk, flour, and sugar.

 

Then, you make crepes just like you would with any batter.  Poor a small amount into a greased frying pan, and then swirl it around so it is nice and thin. 

 

When the batter is bubbly, flip it over and cook until nicely browned.  If you look closely in this picture, you can see me and my boyfriend, who actually did all of the crepe making while I ate them fresh off the stove. :-)

I've always found that the first couple crepes come out a little messy and the crepes made later in the batch are the best. Here are the first two:

 

And the last couple:

 

For toppings I used soy yogurt, blueberries, bananas, and strawberries. Later in the week I also tried a peanut butter banana combination.  The different combinations were very different, but all quite tasty. 

 

 

I will say that this is the only recipe of the week that tasted better with animal products.  The crepes tasted like they were missing something.  If you've ever had any sub-par gluten-free products (not my mom's!), it was kind of like that.  They were still pretty good, and very edible, just not quite there. 

  

 

Vegan Week

Starting on Monday, I decided to stick to a vegan diet this week.  You're probably asking yourself why.  Honestly, there isn't one reason that made me decide to do this.  There are a couple different reasons, but none of them would be strong enough on their own.  Here they are:

• Help the earth's environment
• Eat fewer processed/unnatural foods
• Force myself to try new recipes
• See if I could stick with it

I have been able to accomplish some of these goals to date.  Specifically, I have been able to stick with the plan.  I have not eaten any animals or animal products since Sunday night. I have indeed tried out some new recipes, which are below.   I have also bought more organic foods than usual (probably because I went to Whole Foods and was too lazy to go to Giant to buy cheaper vegetables). I have not however, eaten fewer processed foods.  I have probably actually eaten more processed foods and more carbs than normal.  It turns out that saltine crackers are vegan, and the combination of saltines and peanut butter has been too great for me to resist.

Here are some of the foods that I've made so far this week, starting out with breakfast.  I've eaten overnight oats each day this week.  I've had trouble coming up with other quick and easy breakfast options (other than smoothies, which require an extra 10 minutes of work in the morning). Here is today's banana cinnamon steel oats version, made with banana, almond milk, steel oats, and cinnamon.

 

For lunch I've been having a lot of vegetables.  Today I had plans after work, so I actually had two lunches.  Here is lunch part one.  I had cream of asparagus soup (made with almond milk and my homemade vegetable broth) and a toasted whole wheat pita.The pita and soup was a fantastic combination.  If you're interested in the recipe for the asparagus soup, check out http://blogilates.com/best-of/blogilates-vegan-challenge-meal-plan.

  

For my second lunch/first dinner, I had spaghetti squash with canned tomato sauce (with oregano and cayenne sprinkled in), fresh diced tomatoes, and seitan.  Seitan is a protein source (read meat substitute) made from wheat gluten.  It looks like middle school cafeteria mystery meat, but is really rather benign.

Another dinner I made this week was sushi.  Here I filled my rolls with cucumber, avocado, and asparagus.  I had some mango slices for dessert as well.

 

Speaking of dessert....I bought a vegan cookie today at the climbing gym.  The picture is upside down--obviously--but it is a double chocolate chunk cookie.  It tasted like a normal cookie, and in pre-fab cookie form, it was a little too sweet for my taste.  Gasp, I know.  The calorie count on this cookie was out of control.  This single cookie, about the size of my palm, was almost 500 calories.  I don't know how that compares to normal cookies, but it was quite a shock to me.

Those are just some of the recipes I have made so far this week.  I'll post later in the week with more recipes!  So far I haven't really missed any animal-based foods.  I've been able to eat just about everything I've wanted.

Vegan Mondays: Week Two

This week was my second attempt at eating exclusively plant-based foods on Monday.   The pictures are not great because they were all taken from my cell phone, and the recipes were not new, but unlike last week, I succeeded in eating only vegan foods.

For breakfast I had peanut butter banana overnight oats.  The ingredients were: organic steel cut oats, vanilla soy yogurt, vanilla soy milk, natural peanut butter, flax seeds, and one banana.  The steel cut oats give the oatmeal a completely different texture than rolled or quick oats.

 

For lunch I had edamame salad over spinach.  Check out a more enticing picture of this recipe in my previous blog post here. The ingredients for this salad were: spinach, onion, edamame, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, and green bell pepper.  The dressing was made from: olive oil, miso paste, ginger, garlic, and sesame oil.

And for dinner I made taco salad.  This was probably the most exciting meal of the day.  Again, I've blogged about this dish before, so I won't go into too much detail. You can check it out here.  The ingredients were: whole wheat tortilla, avocado, green bell pepper, black beans, tomato, corn, onion, and fajita seasoning.

 

I think that I did a pretty good job of hitting all of the food groups in this week's vegan adventure.  I got carbs in breakfast and dinner; vegetables in lunch and dinner; fruit at breakfast; and protein in breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  I'm not sure if soy milk and yogurt count as dairy products in the food pyramid, but if they do, I had those covered at breakfast too.   What's your favorite vegan dish?

Forget Meatless Mondays, let's try Vegan Mondays

A little while ago I came across some "Meatless Monday" recipes on Food Gawker.  Since I already am almost vegetarian, I decided to step this idea up a little and try out Vegan Mondays.  I thought this would be a good way to be more creative in my cooking while also doing a little bit to help the environment.

Last Monday was my first Vegan Monday.  I plan to make this a weekly post, chronicling my adventures in vegan eating every Monday.

For breakfast I created a vegan version of my overnight oatmeal.  I used traditional oats, a banana, half of a pear, applesauce (instead of yogurt), soy milk (instead of cow's milk), cinnamon and nutmeg.  This turned out absolutely delicious, as always.  It tasted exactly like my usual pear overnight oats.  Next time, I'll remember to add in pecans as well.

 

For lunch, I had packed some focaccia I made over the weekend (see post here).  I thought, that's definitely vegan, it's just yeast, flour, and water.  Plus, I only put vegetables on top.   Once I took it out at work to heat it up, however, I remembered that I also sprinkled cheese on top.  Oops!  Luckily for me, I was prepared and also had some snacks at work.  So, instead of my focaccia, I had hummus, whole wheat pita, carrots and peppers for lunch.  Yum.

As a snack, I had my homemade pumpkin chocolate chip granola bars.  The inspiration for these bars came from this website: http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2010/10/20/pumpkin-cinnamon-chip-pecan-granola-bars/. These bars were made of oats, pecans, pumpkin puree, banana, applesauce, brown sugar, vanilla, and chocolate chips.  Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure these are really vegan.  I was careful not to use honey, but are chocolate chips vegan? I just checked the bag that I used and the answer is no.  They contain milk.  Oops.  This was my first attempt at Vegan Monday.  I'll do better next week!

For dinner I made a spinach salad with falafel sprinkle on top.  You're probably thinking...falafel sprinkle....what is that?  Well, falafel sprinkle is what happens when you forget how to make falafel and the patties do not stick together.  Instead of having nice balls of chickpeas and onions, you have fried bits of chickpeas and onion.  The taste is exactly the same, but the results are harder to eat.  That's why I put them on a salad.  In this case, the salad had spinach, cucumbers and falafel sprinkle, with some lemon juice. I promise I have made falafel successfully in the past.  I even have pictures.  I'll post an entry on here to prove it.

 

Overall, I think my first Vegan Monday was moderately successful.  I made two mistakes, but was able to catch myself on one before it was too late.  Animal products are in more foods than I had anticipated, but I think this is a great weekly challenge for myself.