Five Minute Photoshop: Banana Muffins

/ Kelly / 3 Comments

Okay guys, I am being a big lame-o today.  I had a fun and enlightening time at my little bro’s frat party last night, but we didn’t leave his college until 3:30 this afternoon, and then the family went out to dinner, so… I’m feeling a little lazy and uninspired for this MoFo post. However, I will tell you that I made some kick-ass banana muffins the other night, based on this recipe. I modified it a bit and will continue to tweak it until it’s perfect, but I loooved the results of my initial experimentation. And I’m not even much of a banana muffin type of girl! But these were fantastic. I’ll definitely share my modifications next time I make them, but for now, here is a “photograph” of a yummy muffin.

EAT ME.

…yup, I am that lame. And generally my Photoshop skillz are way more advanced, but like I said – lazy and uninspired. I’ll do better next time, I promise.

Get Out of Jail Free: The Vegan’s 100 List

/ Kelly / 3 Comments

You knew it was coming.

Yup, today I’m using my MoFo version of a Get Out of Jail Free card and filing out that Vegan’s 100 List that’s been making the rounds. It’s not even that I don’t have anything about which to blog, but more that I didn’t have time this morning, I’m at work now (I work super part-time… three hours today!), and after work I need to get ready and then head up to my brother’s college for an end-of-term party tonight. Coming up in the near future will be posts about super awesome banana-oat muffins, super-garlicky baba ganoush, and possibly Chocomole. But for today, my list! Which is bound to be pretty pathetic. I’m a new vegan, but that’s really no excuse, since I was effectively vegan for ~9 months before making the official switch. Ah well. I’ll think of it as inspiration. Also. Sorry for the commentary, but I can’t resist adding my two cents. It makes posting the list a little less of a cop-out, though, right? Heh.

Rules:
1) Copy this list into your blog or social networking site profile, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out or italicize any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment on this post linking to your results.

1. Molasses (Regular and blackstrap. We used to eat it on pancakes… my cousins were weirded out by that!)
2. Cactus/Nopales
3. Scrambled Tofu (Duh.)
4. Grilled Portobella Caps
5. Fresh Ground Horseradish
6. Sweet Potato Biscuits (No, but these sound delicious!)
7. Arepas (…um?)
8. Vegan Coleslaw (I was never a huge coleslaw fan. Maybe a vegan version would change that?)
9. Ginger Carrot Soup
10. Fiddlehead Ferns
11. Roasted Elephant Garlic
12. Umeboshi
13. Almond Butter Toast (I suck.)
14. Aloe Vera
15. H and H Bagel NYC
16. Slow Roasted Butternut Squash
17. White truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Freshly ground wasabi
20. Coconut Milk Ice Cream (Heck yeah!)
21. Heirloom tomatoes (Love ’em.)
22. Orchard-fresh pressed apple cider (I’m pretty sure, at least…)
23. Organic California Mango
24. Quinoa
25. Papaya Smoothie
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet or Habañero pepper (It counts if it was in salsa, right?)
27. Goji Berry Tea
28. Fennel
29. Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies (OMG. I just realized I’ve never made straight-up vegan chocolate chip cookies! WTF.)
30. Radishes and Vegan Buttery Spread
31. Starfruit
32. Oven fresh Sourdough bread
33. Sangria made with premium fruit and juices (Okay… premium? Really?)
34. Sauerkraut
35. Acai Smoothie
36. Blue Foot Mushrooms
37. Vegan Cupcake from Babycakes NYC
38. Sweet Potatoes and Tempeh combo
39. Falafel (I fell in love with falafel in Berlin… mmm.)
40. Spelt Crust Pizza
41. Salt and Pepper Oyster Mushrooms
42. Jicama Slaw
43. Pumpkin Edamame Ginger Dumplings
44. Hemp Milk
45. Rose Champagne
46. Fuyu (aka persimmons)
47. Raw Avocado-Coconut Soup
48. Tofu Pesto Sandwich
49. Apple-Lemon-Ginger-Cayenne fresh-pressed juice
50. Grilled Seitan
51. Prickly pear
52. Fresh Pressed Almond Milk
53. Concord Grapes off the vine
54. Ramps
55. Coconut Water fresh from a young coconut
56. Organic Arugula (I’ve eaten a lot of salads in my day, so I’m going to assume that at least one of them included this!)
57. Vidalia Onion
58. Sampler of organic produce from Diamond Organics (Um?)
59. Honeycrisp Apple (Just yesterday!)
60. Poi
61. Vegan Campfire-toasted S’mores (Sigh.)
62. Grape seed Oil
63. Farm fresh-picked Peach (It counts if it was from a farmer’s market, right?)
64. Freshly-made pita bread with freshly-made hummus
65. Chestnut Snack Packs
66. Fresh Guava
67. Mint Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies (Okay, I love mint and I love chocolate and I love oatmeal, but together? I dunno… I’ll have to try it!)
68. Raw Mallomar from One Lucky Duck, NYC
69. Fried plantains
70. Mache
71. Golden Beets
72. Barrel-Fresh Pickles
73. Liquid Smoke (I just bought a bottle, though!)
74. Meyer Lemon
75. Veggie Paella
76. Vegan Lasagna
77. Kombucha
78. Homemade Soy Milk
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Lychee Bellini
81. Tempeh Bacon (Okay, honestly? I wasn’t a fan. But back then I didn’t really like tempeh all that much, so… maybe I should try it again.)
82. Sprouted Grain Bread
83. Lemon Pepper Tempeh
84. Vanilla Bean
85. Watercress
86. Carrot you pulled out of the ground yourself
87. Vegan In-Season Fruit Pie
88. Flowers (Dried hibiscus is icky.)
89. Corn Chowder
90. High Quality Vegan Raw Chocolate
91. Yellow fuzz-free Kiwi
92. White Flesh Grapefruit (I love grapefruit. SO MUCH.)
93. Harissa
94. Coconut Oil
95. Jackfruit
96. Homemade Risotto
97. Spirulina (It was in an Odwalla bar… hehe.)
98. Seedless ‘Pixie’ Tangerine
99. Gourmet Sorbet
100. Fresh Plucked English Peas

Well, that was fun… and embarrassing. I’ll see you all tomorrow with something more substantial, I promise! Wish me luck tonight – my college didn’t have a Greek system, and I’ve never been to a frat party! Yikes!

Raw Wednesday: Honeycrisp Heaven

/ Kelly / 5 Comments

I’m just going to level with y’all right now. I didn’t truly participate in Raw Wednesday this week. I know, I know. I’m properly ashamed and all. It’s just that I was in minor panic mode all day long (more on that later) and didn’t really eat much, and when I did, I couldn’t be bothered to do anything more than reheat a leftover vegan enchilada my wonderful daddy made for dinner a couple of nights ago. That was lunch; I skipped breakfast (I know!) and had a vegan burger for dinner… the kind from a box. I know.

I did, however, go raw for dessert. By which I mean I ate an apple. So… that counts, right? Counts-ish? Maybe? Okay, maybe not. But honestly, I couldn’t be arsed to make a more complex dessert, and Honeycrisp apples were on sale at the grocery store today, and they just looked so inviting in the fruit bowl… and you know what? I don’t think I’ve ever had a Honeycrisp before tonight. But they’re listed on that Vegan’s 100 List which seems to make for an excellent lazy-day MoFo post (mine’s coming, don’t you worry), and people have been blogging left and right about their deliciousness… so I had to try one.

Crispeh!

Ooer. I think they live up to all the hype. Honeycrisps are kind of my perfect apple, sweet but not too sweet, a little bit juicy, and, well, crisp. It was love at first bite.

On the topic of biting, fun fact – I can’t eat apples straight-up; I have to cut them into pieces because my gums are, um, slightly receding and biting into apples isn’t great for that. Oh, the joys of growing old (snerk). At least I’ll never fail to appreciate the joy of a simple raw treat, even if I do have to hack it up in order to enjoy it. ;)

Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles

/ Kelly / 3 Comments

I’m pretty sure that this might be the recipe of VeganMoFo 2009. Isa’s Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles captured my eye when she first blogged about them, and they’ve been dominating the MoFo cookie-related posts lately. It seems like every other blogger is making and then raving about these cookies, and this post is not going to be any different.

So I’ll keep it simple, I think. These cookies rock. Like hardcore, head-thrashing, wild dancing rock. The texture, the taste, the cayenne that slowly builds ’til it kicks you in the throat… it’s all perfect. And they look damn good, too.

Mexican YUM.

All I can say is, I’m totally buying Isa’s and Terry’s new book as soon as I can get my grubby little hands on it. Their cookies can invade my cookie jar any day of the week… if ya know what I mean. ;) Ohhh yeahhh.

Scramble on a Sunday… or, um, Monday

/ Kelly / 5 Comments

This morning, I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep because I was c-c-cold. Even though I was wrapped up, cocoon-like, in a fleece blanket beneath my sheet and light summer blanket, it wasn’t enough to keep out that October chill. Even though the weather’s not frigid by any means, it’s still cold enough to leave my poorly-insulated body shivering. I guess it’s time to break out the cold-weather comforter, eh?

Needless to say, when I got up, I knew I wanted a nice warm breakfast to fill my tummy. Although the idea of eating another big bowl of Brownie Batter Oats was tempting, I had half a block of tofu in the fridge that was just begging to be used. So I decided to go with that vegan breakfast standby, tofu scramble. Nothing beats an old classic, right?

Scraaamble it up.

Right. Although I’ve tried various scramble “recipes” in the past, I usually end up just throwing a hodge-podge of pantry items into the pan and calling it a day. This one included – along with tofu – onions, garlic, red peppers, turmeric, cumin, a bit o’ coriander, a roasted potato spice blend, some veggie stock, and a bit of nutritional yeast. With an English muffin and a glass of apple cider, this filled my tummy, warmed me up, and generally made for a wonderful autumnal breakfast. :)

On another note, it’s the first day of the first week of Project Feed Me! This week, Natalie is asking participants to purchase two cans of chili. I’ll be heading to the grocery store tomorrow to pick some up, and I encourage you to do the same. Check out this post for more info about the project and how you can help give back during MoFo. Thanks, guys!

Oh, and PS: Happy Thanksgiving, my Canadian friends! Hope you have a wonderful day. :)

B-foods for B-fast

/ Kelly / 4 Comments

When I woke up this morning and saw Katie’s “There’s Chocolate in my Banana Brulee” post staring me in the face in my Google Reader, I knew I exactly what I was going to make for breakfast. I’ve made Brownie Batter Oats for breakfast in the past, and I always use the Melted Banana Trick in my oat bran, but today I took things to a whole new level. I didn’t have that Hershey’s Extra Dark cocoa last time I made my Brownie Batter Oats, but now I do, so today I totally rocked the house with this Dutch-processed delight. My recent discovery of Momma’s immersion blender (hallelujah!) allowed me to create a creamy confection that tantalized my taste buds and satisfied my Sunday morning hunger pangs.

B-foods for b-fast.

What a decadent breakfast, right? I used Bob’s Red Mill 10 Grain Hot Cereal in this bowl; it contains an impressive variety of healthy grains and fills my belly quite well. In fact, this morning’s bowl was so filling and so rich that I was barely able to finish the thick slice of Blueberry-Banana Bread I’d cut for myself! I followed this recipe from FatFree Vegan Kitchen, although I subbed regular sugar for agave nectar since I’m running low on agave. I also used a mix of unbleached AP flour and whole wheat flour as I don’t have any white whole wheat flour. The bread tastes wonderful and was a great way to use some of the blueberries we picked during the summer. I love having frozen blueberries available at a moment’s notice! Knowing that we picked them from a local farm just sweetens the deal. :)

Before I end, I just want to encourage everyone to check out my post about Project Feed Me. This is really important to me, and I’d love for you all to get involved! So please please please give it a read! Thanks, friends. You’re the bestest. :)

Giving Back During MoFo: Project Feed Me

/ Kelly / 3 Comments

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Hey friends, please bear with me while I use my daily MoFo post to draw attention to something pretty fantastic that’s going on in the blogosphere. It’s about food, so hey – I’m using my MoFo banner and calling it acceptable. ;)

In case you haven’t heard, Natalie at NoNo2YoYo is organizing a wonderful nine-week program designed to help feed families in need during the upcoming holiday season. The concept of Project Feed Me is pretty simple. Every Monday during the program, Natalie will post a list of recommended food items that food banks nationwide need. Participants will purchase at least two of these items per week, and when the nine weeks are up, everyone will donate the food to a local food bank. Not too difficult, right? But Natalie’s really kicking the project into high gear by asking that every participant commit to recruiting at least three more people to participate in Project Feed Me. If everyone at least tries to spread the word, the number of people who participate could be pretty impressive. Check out Natalie’s Project Feed Me page for a FAQ section and more information on the project, including a seriously awe-inspiring chart showing just how much food we could gather if we commit to recruiting participants and work to rally the troops. ;)

During this merry month o’ MoFo, when we blog all about the delicious food we eat and the restaurants we visit, maybe we also need to step back and consider how lucky we are to be able to live this lifestyle, to put yummy food in our bellies, and to have computers and internet access that enables us to blog about said food. How many people are have no idea what – or if – they’ll eat next? And for how many people would the idea of blogging about food just seem purposeless, when they’re struggling to eat? If you step back and think about that, it’s pretty humbling. It seems to me that Project Feed Me is the perfect accompaniment to MoFo, and I’ll proudly participate throughout the next nine weeks, even after MoFo is done and my poor little fingers are worn down from blogging so consistently. I encourage all of you to do the same and to spread the word about this great idea. So, what are you waiting for? Head over here to register for Project Feed Me and to be part of something great. :)

I’m as corny as HOMEMADE KETTLE CORN in October!

/ Kelly / 5 Comments

I’m squeaking by with an hour to spare on my Friday MoFo post; I spent an extended amount of time retrieving my siblings from their various colleges tonight and now I want to go hang out with them, but I’m popping in to make one very important statement: the kettle corn recipe from Joy the Baker is frickin’ amazing. Here’s a crappy picture that doesn’t at all do this recipe justice; you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.

!!!

HOLY YUM, BATMAN. After citing kettle corn as my favorite “topping” for popcorn while filling out that MoFo survey, I kinda sorta started craving the delicious stuff. So when I found this recipe, I knew I had to try it. I expected the results to be tasty but nowhere near as good as the stuff you buy for ridiculous amounts of money at street fairs or Waterfire, but guess what? It was TOTALLY as good as that bagged crap. Like, I-want-to-stuff-my-face-until-my-tummy-bursts good. Umm, hello, new favorite! And I loved making popcorn on the stove. We usually use an air popper, so it was fun to have this hands-on experience. Plus, you get to adjust the proportions of this recipe and can tailor the sugar/salt ratio to your personal preference! I enjoyed a big bowl of this while watching Jim & Pam’s wedding on The Office last night. What a perfect combination.

And with that, I’m out like a powder blue polyester leisure suit. Peace!

(P.S. Please forgive the stupid title of this post; I’m feelin’ a little hyper right now.)

Coziness in a Cookie

/ Kelly / 4 Comments

I love cookies. I love baking them and eating them and sharing them. I especially love sharing them. Because even though I could down a seriously impressive number of cookies in one go, I love the warm fuzzies I get when I can make someone’s day by giving her a homemade cookie. It’s a wonderful feeling.

So last night, I whipped up a batch and a half of these Molasses Cookies from Hell Yeah It’s Vegan. One batch of cookies is usually enough to share between my parents and I, but I had something special in mind for these babies and needed to make extras. I just couldn’t resist this recipe; I’m a huge fan of molasses cookies, and I was salivating just looking at the pictures of these beautiful little buggers. They seemed like the perfect cookie for a chilly night. Because I’m not a huge fan of it, I omitted the crystallized ginger. I did include the ground ginger, though, because I don’t really mind it when it’s not in chunks. The dough came together wonderfully, and my sampling of said dough reassured me that the finished products were going to be fantastic. I’m not ashamed to admit that I probably “sampled” at least two cookies’ worth of dough while it was chillin’ in the fridge. It was that good. But the finished cookies were even better. See?

Cozy goodness.

They’re perfectly chewy on the inside and the tiniest bit crunchy on the outside, thanks to their roll in a bowl full o’ sugar. I just couldn’t get enough of them. The spice blend provides a wonderful little kick, which is complemented by the rich molasses flavor. I used a mix of blackstrap and regular molasses, which I think worked really well. These are the ultimate “cozy” cookie. I predict I’ll be making them fairly often come winter, perhaps even for Christmas. Yum.

I did have to restrain myself from really chowing down, however, because I needed to save ten of these lovelies for a special purpose. They’ve left the nest and are on a one-way trip halfway across the country to my boyfriend, because I’m feeling a little maternal at the moment and I want to feed him lots of yummy baked goods, especially ones that make you feel all cozy inside when you eat them.

So adios, my delicious, cozy, cookies! I hardly knew ye. ;)

Raw Wednesday: Choosing Raw’s Zucchini Marinara

/ Kelly / 5 Comments

It’s Raw Wednesday, people! Get excited! I know I sure did. Today I realized that I haven’t used Sallie the spiralizer in a few weeks, and that’s just a darn shame. So I liberated Sallie from her hiding place in the cupboard and set her to work making zucchini “pasta” for my raw lunch.

As I was debating what to use as a topping for my zucchini noodles, I remembered hearing various bloggers rave about the Sweet Pepper Marinara from Choosing Raw. When I checked out the recipe and realized that I had everything I needed to make the famed raw marinara sauce, I just couldn’t resist. Into my trusty ol’ blender went all the ingredients, and the result was a thick, beautiful, brightly-colored marinara sauce that tasted as good as it looked.

Pretty colors, no? I followed Gina’s suggestion and added some avocado slices to my zucchini noodles, which helped bring some variety to the bowl. Unpictured is a big handful of mung bean sprouts I also threw in there; we had some in the fridge that needed to be eaten and I figured, what the heck? They’re noodle-y enough! And the marinara sauce tasted just wonderful over all my veggies. I’m glad to say that the sauce lived up to the hype; I really loved it. I think I’ll be sure to add more sundried tomatoes next time, though, because I was eyeballing my measurements and I think I skimped in that department. Ah well.

Now I just need to get me some dates and whip up some of that Chocomole that looks so enticing! Mmm, dessert… :)