Blueberry Pecan Granola

/ Kelly / 6 Comments

You know what’s surprisingly difficult to find at my local grocery stores? Quality vegan granola. They’re all too sugary or use honey or include milk chocolate. And the good ones are damn expensive! Yuck. Happily, it’s pretty easy to work up a batch of homemade, inexpensive granola to your taste; the most challenging part is deciding on which add-ins to include!

I’ve wanted to use my beloved dried wild blueberries in granola since I first conceived of my MoFo theme. This weekend, I finally did it! I created a blueberry granola lightly kissed with maple syrup and cinnamon and full of nutty crunch. It’s absolutely delicious, if I do say so myself. ;)

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Blueberry-Pecan Granola

Makes 2 1/2 cups, give or take

  • 2 C rolled oats (I use Bob’s Red Mill Rolled Oats)
  • 1/4 C ground flaxseed
  • Heaping 1/3 C raw pumpkin seeds
  • 1/4 C chopped pecans
  • 1/2 t cinnamon
  • 1/4 t salt
  • A few dashes nutmeg
  • 1/4 C + 1 T melted coconut oil
  • 1/4 C + 1 T pure maple syrup
  • 1 t vanilla extract
  • Heaping 1/3 C dried wild blueberries

Preheat oven to 350˚ and line a flat baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, stir together the oats, flax, pecans, sunflower seeds, and spices. Set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk the coconut oil, maple syrup, and vanilla extract. (Warning: The resulting liquid will smell like heaven in a bowl. Resist the urge to go at it with a spoon!)

Add the wet mixture to the dry and stir to coat. Pour the granola onto the prepared baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and add the dried blueberries, stirring to combine. Bake for another 10-15 minutes or until the oats are golden. Remove from oven and let cool for at least 10 minutes.

(Full disclosure: I originally made this with just 1/4 C coconut oil, but it didn’t create as many granola clumps as I wanted. So I’m increasing the measurement by an additional tablespoon—if you try it, let me know how it works out!)

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Check back in tomorrow to see how I used this granola—it’s gonna be good!

What’s your favorite kind of granola? How do you eat it?

Note: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase something through my link, it costs nothing extra for you, but I get a few pennies to help cover hosting costs.

MoFo Monday: Hot Pumpkin Mug

/ Kelly / 1 Comment


A confession: The recipe I made for this week’s MoFo Monday isn’t actually from a blogger who’s participating in VeganMoFo this year. I knowww. However, Kathy Patalsky from Healthy. Happy. Life. is a rockstar vegan blogger and cookbook author who just so happened to post a recipe that I desperately wanted to try. I’d actually planned to make Angela’s crazy-amazing Apple Pie Chia Seed Breakfast Parfait, buttt I didn’t realize that Costco closes at 6:00 on Sundays, and that’s where I was planning to stock up on chia seeds (rather than pay out the nose at Whole Foods). Oops. Next week?

Anyway, I quickly changed plans last night and decided to make Kathy’s Hot Pumpkin Mug this morning instead. Basically, Kathy stripped out the caffeine that you typically find in a hot pumpkin beverage and let the pumpkin shine. It’s a creamy, spicy, frothy drink that’ll warm your belly and fill you up.

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My pumpkin drink wasn’t nearly as orange as Kathy’s, even though I cheated and added some turmeric for color. And I didn’t have time this morning to make coconut whipped cream. But it was still absolutely lovely! S is sitting at his computer right now, drinking it and making satisfied Mmm sounds. :)

What’s your favorite warm beverage? What’s your favorite pumpkin beverage?

Lazy Sunday II

/ Kelly / 2 Comments

Just like I did last Sunday, today I’ll take a breather and answer some of the official MoFo blogging prompts. (I know, yesterday was nothing if not a breather… but a girl’s gotta rest up on the weekends!) So far today I’ve fed and walked Moria, had breakfast (tea, a grapefruit, and toast), and finished reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane (if you like Neil Gaiman at all, read it!). I’m currently trying to decide whether I’ll bother showering today, and soon I’ll mosey over to the kitchen to start prepping some food for the week. If I can work in some knitting later, this will be pretty darn close to my perfect lazy Sunday.

Anyway, enough about my slothdom. On to the questions!

What’s the best vegan meal you’ve ever eaten?

Here’s the thing. I am horrible—horrible!—at choosing a favorite anything. While I do have strong feelings about many topics (feminism, not texting while driving, the repellent nature of stray hairs), I’m often hard-pressed to choose favorites, especially when put on the spot. And with this question in particular, well, I’m lucky to have eaten many scrumptious vegan meals.

But.

One particular meal stands out.

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Just over a year ago, between shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, S and I had dinner at Henderson’s, and the Nut Roll blew. my. mind. so much so that I still remember it every so often with a little sigh. You can read about the details here. Bottom line? It might very well be the best vegan meal I’ve had. My mouth is watering just remembering it.

But a meal is about more than just the food. It’s about the circumstances in which you ate it and the people with whom you shared it. I shared this meal with my steadfast, sweet S during a truly wonderful vacation together in a city (and country) I just adored. It would be difficult to top that. :)

What was your first vegan cookbook?

This one’s easier to answer! I received Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and Vegan with a Vengeance for Christmas in 2008. I’d been vegetarian for a while and, after slowly realizing that being vegetarian didn’t quite hold with my ethics, wanted to explore veganism. These cookbooks helped me feel comfortable cooking and eating vegan. I treasured them, thumbing through them over and over, learning about new-to-me ingredients, and delighting in my vegan enlightenment. I still cook from them.

Talk about your favorite place to buy vegetables.

My favorite place to buy vegetables is at the west-side Willy Street Co-op at around 8:00 PM, when the store is mostly empty and I can have the aisles nearly to myself. I feel like I ought to say the farmers’ market, but honestly? Crowds make me nervous, and my experiences with farmers’ markets are never fully positive because they are invariably crowded. Not so my beloved co-op. Plus, it always has a good selection of local vegetables and includes info about their sources on its price cards.

Alas—I now live exactly 696 miles from my beloved co-op, and I’ve yet to find a worthy replacement. We can walk to a Giant in five minutes, but their produce is your typical big-box grocery store fair. Trader Joe’s is a seven-minute drive away, and they do stock a small amount of local fruit and veg, but the selection varies and is not often organic. Whole Foods is about a 15-minute drive away, but it’s not cheekily called “Whole Paycheck” for nothin’! So, all that’s to say that I’m still searching for a new favorite place to get my veggie fix. I think I’ll participate in a CSA next year, because I’ve had very good luck with them in the past… and there are no crowds. ;)

What’re your answers to any/all of these questions? What are you doing on this Sunday?

In Which I Try to Link Empanadas with My MoFo Theme

/ Kelly / 2 Comments

Happy Saturday! If you think this post is going up much later in the day than any of my other MoFo posts have, well… you’re absolutely right. Truth be told, I don’t have anything particularly fruity to blog about today! We desperately need to hit up the grocery store: there’s no almond milk in the fridge and my fruit supplies are running low. Plus, we spent much of today in DC at the Corcoran, gettin’ our culture on. All that art* wore me out; I slept through most of the metro ride home. I’m still waiting for my second wind!

So… where will the seasonal fruit come into this post, you ask? Oh, don’t worry. I’m about to make an extremely tenuous connection.

After leaving the Corcoran, we were hungry. Not wanting to drop a huge chunk of change on lunch, we’d looked up cheaper options in the area, and Julia’s Empanadas popped up in my search as a venue that offers a rotating vegan option. There are four locations in DC, one of which is a 15-minute walk from the Corcoran and decently close to the Dupont Circle metro. Sold! Today, their veg option featured spinach, white beans, onions, and a few other assorted veggies. Neither S nor I could really discern a distinct and overriding flavor, but we detected a hint of curry. But that’s not to say they were bland! Instead, they were richly flavorful and warming on a slightly chilly September day. S and I each got one but ended up returning for a third to share.

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But I don’t want to overpraise the empanadas’ innards at the expense of their… outards…? Hm. Invented words aside, the empanada dough was slightly sweet, with a flavor of its own that comes from butternut squash, which is—botanically speaking—a fruit. BAM. Themed!

What did you do today? What’s your favorite empanada filling?

*More specifically, the war photos exhibit. Wow. Incredibly moving and not for the faint of heart or stomach. Highly recommended if you’re in the area!

Pumpkin Overnight Oats

/ Kelly / 7 Comments

When I wake up in the morning, my list of immediate tasks to complete is short: Use the potty, shower, feed and walk Moria. Notably absent from that list? Eating breakfast. I just can’t eat first thing in the morning; I need at least an hour for my stomach to settle. I’ve always been this way, meaning that my “breakfast” during high school was usually a bagel or something I could wolf down during homeroom, since I sure as hell wasn’t going to get up early enough to eat at home. Sometimes I didn’t eat breakfast at all.

These days, I never miss breakfast. I usually eat during my first hour or so at work. I like to keep cereal at my desk and almond milk in the fridge, but I often bring something else—muffins, fruit, whatever’s lying around. I’m also a big fan of oatmeal, particularly overnight oats.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, it’s beautifully simple. You soak rolled oats and your add-ins of choice in nondairy milk overnight, and they’re ready to eat the next morning. The taste and texture are notably different from cooked oatmeal;  overnight oats are less porridge-y because the oats retain their individual shape better. You also eat them cold. I was wary at first, but I adore them now.

For the past couple days, I’ve been loving this intensely flavorful, pumpkin-based oat concoction. A heaping spoonful of blackstrap molasses adds iron and calcium (not to mention a rich, deep sweetness), while pumpkin gives you Vitamin A galore. Add a big shake of cinnamon and you’re ready to start your day off right!

Vegan pumpkin overnight oats // govegga.com

Pumpkin Overnight Oats
Serves one

  • 1/2 C + 1 T nondairy milk
  • 1/3 C pumpkin puree
  • 1 T blackstrap molasses (you can add more if you’re a fan like I am)
  • 1 T pure maple syrup
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon (I actually prefer closer to 1 tsp, but again, that’s just me!)
  • Dash nutmeg
  • 1/2 C rolled oats (I use Bob’s Red Mill Rolled Oats)

In a mason jar or other container with a tight lid, combine all ingredients except the oats. Shake vigorously until well-combined. Add the oats and shake again. Place in fridge and cool overnight.

What’s your favorite make-ahead breakfast? What kind of overnight oats do you enjoy?

Note: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase something through my link, it costs nothing extra for you, but I get a few pennies to help cover hosting costs.

Easy as Pie: Pumpkin Pudding

/ Kelly / 1 Comment

The hot weather continues here in Maryland. I’m not sure if there’s a more PC term for “Indian summer,” but whatever it is, it’s what’s going on here.* Despite the sweat-inducing temperatures outdoors, my thoughts are rapidly straying to autumn and to all the culinary changes it brings. If you’re familiar with VeganMoFo, then you probably know that the foodie blogworld goes absolutely bonkers for one particular ingredient this time of year:

Top-down view of lots of orange pumpkins.

Perhaps my shopping list from yesterday’s post was a giveaway, but I’ve been jonesin’ for something made with pumpkin lately. But baked goods weren’t exactly at the top of my want-list last night; our apartment was hot, I was sleepy, and we already have lots of leftovers hanging around from my other MoFo experiments. Instead, I settled for probably the easiest dessert ever: pumpkin pudding.

 

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I’d fully intended to come up with my own recipe, but this one from Healthy. Happy. Life. is a dead ringer for the idea I had in my head, so I won’t bother sharing a recipe. The only changes I made were to totally avoid measuring anything (ahem, I said I was sleepy) and to use a bit of brown sugar along with the maple syrup. Oh, and I just dumped some autumnal spices in because I ain’t got no pumpkin pie spice.

Although soy-free puddings certainly appeal to a wider crowd, this silken tofu-based one is just unbeatable in terms of simplicity. Whizz it all up in the blender, let it set, and presto—instant dessert. Even an overheated zombie (who, me?) can’t mess that up.

I’m sure I’ll be baking with pumpkin soon enough, so—what’s your favorite pumpkin recipe? 

*According to Wikipedia, there are actually a boatload of other terms. I think I might like the Chinese one best.

Baked Apples!

/ Kelly / 3 Comments

Ah, September. In these waning days of summer, the leaves are crinkling and dropping at an alarming rate, my precious after-work sunlight time is growing shorter, and there’s an undeniable chill in the air.

Wait, nope, that’s wrong, and I’m definitely denying it. Ain’t no chill round these parts! Yesterday it reached nearly 90˚F here in Maryland, and the rest of the week promises similar heat. Not that I’m complaining; I will happily take any last drop of summer I can get. But the heat did make the autumnal dinner S and I prepared for his mom last night a little… inappropriate? We had a delicious chili S whipped up, cornbread (from Veganomicon), and baked apples for dessert. Totally fall-like, and totally wrong for the hot weather. No matter, though; it was delicious and eminently healthy.

I was especially impressed by the baked apples; I’ve only made them once or twice before, but they’re so easy and so rustically enjoyable! S and I hit up the farmers’ market this weekend, so I used Macintosh apples we picked up there. I simply cored them (anybody have tips for coring apples without a nifty tool?), stuffed them with brown sugar and spices, and set them in a pan filled with a little water. After 40 minutes in the oven and a bit of Earth Balance on top, they were tender, oozy, and ready for devouring; they actually reminded me of the homemade applesauce my mama used to make every fall.

Despite my ringing endorsement of my dessert, it was not particularly photogenic. Plus, we were chatting with S’s mum while eating our apples, and I didn’t want to whip out the camera. So instead of a photo of my baked apples, check out my shopping list from yesterday. It is, unlike the weather, extremely autumnal.

Top-down image of my veiny hand with three words written on it in pen: cinnamon, cornmeal, and pumpkin.Yes, that is an Instagram photo. Yes, my hands are veiny. No, I don’t usually write on my hands (maybe like thrice a year, tops).

What’s on your seasonal shopping list? How do you like your baked apples?

Blueberry Spelt Muffins

/ Kelly / Leave a comment

It was only a matter of time until this day arrived. With a theme that heavily focuses on berries, there just had to be at least one muffin recipe, right? Blueberry muffins are the classic choice, and, well, I’m a sucker for the classics.

The bakery-style muffins from Vegan Brunch were my go-to muffins of choice for a while, but they don’t offer much in the way of nutrition, and they’re awfully sugary. Not that these muffins are much better! They’re certainly not what I would call particularly healthy or wholesome (though spelt and flax certainly don’t hurt), but hey—they taste damn good. And that’s what I want out of my classics.

 

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Blueberry Spelt Muffins
(makes eight normal-sized muffins)

1 T ground flax + 3 T warm water
¾ C unbleached all-purpose flour
½ C spelt flour
½ T baking powder
¼ tsp salt
Scant ½ C sugar
½ C non-dairy milk
Scant ¼ C vegetable or sunflower seed oil
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
Heaping ¾ C blueberries

Preheat your oven to 350˚ F. Grease or line a muffin tin.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flax and water and set aside.

In a large bowl, sift the dry ingredients (flour through sugar) and stir to combine. Make a well in the center and add the wet ingredients. Stir gently to combine, but don’t overmix. Fold in the blueberries.

Pour or spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tins, nearly filling the wells. Bake for 21-23 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

What’s your favorite blueberry muffin recipe

MoFo Monday: Erdbeerboden(ish) from Seitan is My Motor

/ Kelly / 3 Comments

Okay, I know my title is a bit nonsensical—every Monday during MoFo is a MoFo Monday. I’m referring to a new sub-theme I’ve recently (i.e. today) implemented: on Mondays, I will venture into the wider world of MoFo and make a recipe that 1.) still qualifies for my theme of seasonal fruits, but 2.) is another MoFoer’s recipe. There are so many wonderful blogs participating this year, and I’ve been Pinning up a storm as I see recipes that inspire me.

This year, I’ve been absolutely loving Mihl’s theme over at Seitan is My Motor. Mihl’s blog was one of the first ones I started following when I began toying with veganism, and I’ve been a fan ever since. This year, she’s veganizing classic German desserts, and her treats are just so enticing. When I saw her recipe for Erdbeerboden, a strawberry spongecake, I was smitten. I just adored the idea of a light spongecake that lets fruit stand front and center.

Because strawberries aren’t in season around here (sadface!) I swapped in blueberries instead. So this is not a true Erdbeerboden, I suppose! But no matter. It’s still delicious, even though I had to make another last-minute substitute when I realized I was out of agar-agar. Cornstarch saved the day, even though agar would certainly have been a more elegant solution; my cornstarch mixture was a little… thick. On the bright side, I had the perfect pan to make this in, even though I thought I’d gotten rid of it before moving to Maryland. I’m glad my minimalism hasn’t taken full hold yet. ;)

 

Isn’t it pretty? It’s light and just sweet enough. The blueberries made a lovely topping, too—I fully endorse the substitution, and the recipe as a whole. Thanks, Mihl!

What’s your favorite recipe using spongecake?

Lazy Sunday I

/ Kelly / 2 Comments

Hooray! We’ve made it through the first week of MoFo. I’m feelin’ pretty pleased with my progress so far; I’ve shared more original recipes in a week than I had in the previous… I dunno, six or so months. Go me.

But now it’s Sunday, and I promised myself to take it easy on Sundays. (Plus my apartment is a mess, my dog has bowl-you-over vomit breath, and I am plum tuckered out.) So, in lieu of a legit post, I’m going to answer a few of the “official” blogging prompts from the folks at MoFo HQ.

Share your first experience cooking with tofu.

Ahh, this takes me back. It was autumn of 2008, and I was beginning my senior year of college. I lived in an on-campus townhouse with two of my very best friends. I’d been vegetarian since the end of high school, but somehow I’d never made tofu for myself (hey, I had a meal plan for the first three years of college!). Now, though, with a full kitchen at my disposal, a burgeoning interest in veganism, and time to spare (ha ha jk) while working on my senior comps project, I decided to branch out. I hied myself down to the local co-op and picked me up a package of tofu. It looked somethin’ like this:

Box of aseptic packaged extra firm silken tofu.Oh yes, you know where this is going. I gamely cut the pale block into cubes, coated it in some barbecue sauce, and put it in the oven, hoping that some sort of magical tofu fairy who lived in the back of our little gas oven would wave her wand and transform the jiggling cubes into toothsome bites of savory soy.

Alas; no amount of kitchen wizardry can transfigure silken tofu into regular ol’ tofu, and the cubes were as quivery as ever when I removed them from the oven. I ate them, but reader, I did not enjoy them. It took a shameful amount of time for me to realize that I could not ignore the word “silken” on the front of the package and assume that all “extra firm” tofu was the same thing.

Five years later, I consider myself much more knowledgeable. I can recognize tofu that’s been frozen, tofu that’s been pressed… and tofu that’s from a little aseptic package.

Is there something you do in the kitchen that you know you’re not supposed to (knives in the dishwasher, soap on cast iron, etc)?

Well, I can get a little lazy when it comes to certain types of cleaning—if I used a measuring cup for some soy milk, for example, I might just rinse it with water instead of washing it with soap. It just seems like overkill to go through alllll the trouble of turning the faucet to “hot,” pumping some dish soap on a washcloth, and scrubbing away at a single barely used measuring cup. Ugh. (I’m pretty cleanly otherwise, I swear!)

Also, I put some of our crappier knives in the dishwasher, because they are crappy and I don’t really care.

I have been known to eat food that had mold growing on it. Not the actual mold, ew.

Let’s move on.

What’s your favorite accidentally vegan product?

Honestly? Oreos. I know—potential bone char sugar, super processed, questionable corporate ethics… mmhmm. Got it. It’s not like I buy them every month, but damn it, sometimes you’re on a late-night grocery run with your man and you want a snack to eat while you get home and binge watch The West Wing and you just do not feel like baking. In situations like that, I do not hesitate to pick up a package of Oreos. They go great with almond milk.

A single Oreo with a bite taken out of it.

What’re your answers to any/all of these questions? What are you doing on this Sunday?