Banana Spice Muffins

These muffins were Zoey's idea (as you can see). And since Zoey gets what Zoey wants, I had to make them for her.

Well, at least that's my version of what happened.

The true story is that I saw the recipe here and couldn't tear my eyes away. I happened to have a ripe banana in my kitchen and most of the other ingredients on hand so I picked up some coconut milk at the grocery store and I was ready to roll.

To make things more exciting I added some chopped walnuts to some and vegan chocolate chips to others.

Here they are fresh out of the oven. The whole house smelled so good.


I made a second batch because we had friends over and I added some fresh blueberries to some of those. I thought that the blueberry muffins were the prettiest, but they were the least popular. Since I didn't add extra sugar or anything, the blueberries didn't add a sweetness like you would find in a blueberry muffin mix.


Here's a close up shot of the different options. The muffin with chocolate chips was my favorite. This was a great recipe for guests because the recipe was easy and the muffins tasted great!

Hummus Sandwiches

This isn't some fancy recipe, but Zoey and I have been working on sandwich ideas and this one is currently topping the charts at our house. My goal for the week is to increase my consumption of leafy greens, and this is a good way to get some in. Tonight I am making soup with collard greens, so I should be able to meet my goal.

I made this with some red pepper hummus, romaine lettuce and a fresh tomato. I made this with a tomato fresh out of my garden! Now that my neighbor's child isn't picking my tomatoes while green anymore, I am able to let them ripen on the vine and they taste so much better!

The other thing I noticed from this picture is that I am still using my snowman winter plates. It's September and I never switched back to my regular plates. Oh well, it is close enough to December now that I will just leave them out, I like the snowmen and now I look ultra prepared for the holidays!

3 Bean Chili

I am going to allow you to learn from my mistake. If you make a 3 bean chili and you have committed to soaking and cooking all your beans, you really should make the extra effort to soak and cook your different types of beans separately. Otherwise you will end up with something that doesn't look that appealing (see last photo). And, I am pretty sure that the point of a 3 bean chili is to enjoy the look of the different types of beans, which was completely lost on me. In the big chili pot it looked like everything might work out okay, but that was just an illusion.

So anyway, here's the scoop:

I was thrilled to find that my library carried a copy of an instructional video for vegetarian cooking. I love instructional videos. When I was a child my mom got a pasta maker that came with an instructional video. All I remember is that we watched Mary (the instructor) make some beautiful pastas on our tv screen. Next I remember my mom and I in the kitchen with the pasta machine saying something like "this isn't as easy as Mary made it look". I am not sure how often we used that pasta maker after the first day, but someday when I am feeling brave, I am planning to give it another whirl.

But this post is not about pasta, it's about chili. And luckily for me the recipe can be found online here. This is good for me because one of my worst skills is writing down recipes while I am watching someone cook.

The recipe looked easy enough and sounded like something I would like so I gave it a go. I soaked and cooked my three types of beans together (bad idea) and put everything in the cooking pot together. I also made some barley and brown rice as a side (good idea).


Here it is at the end: I have black beans, kidney beans and garbanzo beans in here. However, they all look like strangely colored kidney beans to me. It was all around a bland look, and not the colorful chili that I had hoped for.

It was also a little bland for my tastes so I pulled out some low-sodium soy sauce to spice things up. With soy sauce on top and my eyes closed, this became a pretty good chili. I don't think that I will make it again since I was traumatized by the bean discoloration and I am secretly on a chili testing rampage. Although, I guess it's not a secret anymore.

Bulgur Berry Breakfast

I found the inspiration for this recipe in the October 2008 issue of Oxygen Magazine. I work on eating a variety of grains, so I was interested to try a new use for bulgur. I find bulgur in the bulk foods section of my regular grocery store. If you can't find it there, or your store has no such section, you might need to make a trip to Whole Foods.

Since I can't find the actual recipe online anywhere, I will give you a quick run down of what I did so that you can enjoy this too. It reminded me of oatmeal for breakfast and I found it very filling and satisfying.

Bulgur Berry Breakfast
(serves one person who will be thrilled when she sees how much it makes)

1/4 c. dry bulgur
1/4 c. light vanilla soymilk
1/2 cup of fresh blueberries and strawberries
1 T sliced almonds
sprinkle of cinnamon (optional)

Directions:

1. Bring 1/2 cup of water to a boil. Add the bulgur.
2. Cover and turn off heat. Allow the bulgur to soak for 15 minutes.
3. Return to your bulgur.
4. Feel impressed because you are cooking something that required "soaking".
5. Add another 1/2 cup of water to the bulgur and bring to a boil.
6. Reduce heat to medium low and cook for 10 minutes (stirring occasionally)


7. Add the soymilk and berries.


8. I sprinkled some cinnamon on top because I thought it would make the picture prettier. Turns out that the cinnamon made it taste even better too!


This breakfast takes a little time because of the soaking but it was worth it. I also might make it if I was in the mood for a dessert. It was that good.

Here's the nutritional breakdown: Calories 190, Fat 2g, Protein 6g, Fiber 9g, Vitamin C: 44%, B12 31%.

Enchilada Casserole

I picked this recipe up over at Fat Free Vegan's blog. You can find the complete recipe here. I was drawn to it because it had black beans, peppers, wraps, and most importantly: it was labeled as kid friendly. I have mentioned before that I like reading cookbooks for kids, and I am also more likely to try something new if I hear that someone's child liked it. I may have the palate of an eight year old.

Anyway, this was easy to assemble once I had everything chopped up and divided into bowls.


I topped it with tortillas and fresh tomato slices and placed it in the oven.


Here it is. It was a little "oniony" for me, but otherwise it was very good. I normally like onions, so I am not sure if I didn't saute them for long enough or I was just having a sensitive onion day. For the next 2 days all I smelled was onions - this may be more than anyone wants to know so I will wrap it up. Next time, I'll use 1/2 an onion, or leave it out all together, it would have been just as good.

Blueberry Yogurt

Coconut milk? That is good stuff. Coconut milk yogurt? Even better!

It took about 20 minutes from the moment that I knew this yogurt existed to find myself in the yogurt isle of Whole Foods. This yogurt is a little more expensive than other yogurts, but it is worth it!

To be fair, I haven't had flavored dairy yogurt in years. And even then I ate the fat free chemically flavored aftertaste yogurt. So anything was bound to be an improvement. After that I went to organic fat free plain yogurt... which was an acquired taste. After accepting that dairy yogurt was a major trigger for migraines for me, I switched to soy yogurt. And I am going to be honest here... soy yogurt leaves a lot to be desired (at least for me). Plus I am working on reducing the amount of soy foods in my diet.

So enter this:


This was creamy and rich and amazing in every possible way. It's a little high in fat to be something that I eat all the time, but this is my new favorite "sometimes treat". This is the answer if I am craving a creamy dessert. Even my non-vegan friends agree, this is good stuff.

Chocolate - Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies

Confession: I love baking.

I also love eating baked goods which is why I don't bake very often. I also only follow recipes when baking because the last thing I need is to be "experimenting" with 100 cookie recipes (or even 10 for that matter).

There are 3 occasions when I will bake:

1. Thanksgiving if I have visitors. It's a tradition... and well... it makes football more bearable.

2. When a new neighbor moves in and I go over to introduce myself. I like to have something in my hands when I meet new people. Plus I think if a new neighbor sees cookies they will be more likely to open the door. (Yes, this is how my brain works)

3. Potlucks. Although with potlucks I have been backing off the baked goods and working on portable pasta salads so that I have something with substance to eat at the party.

Well, it's not Thanksgiving and there is no one new in the neighborhood so you can imagine the luck I felt when a friend invited me to a potluck. As a bonus, it was a dessert potluck!

I will admit that the first thing I thought of was a fruit salad. The produce is beautiful this time of year. And then the sugar cravings hit and I thought to myself "Who am I kidding, this is a chance to bake!"

Alright, so that's a long story that lead me to chocolate - chocolate chip walnut cookies. I found the recipe in the book Veganomicon which I happened to have checked out from the library, although after this experience it is going on my wish list to own. The first thing that I needed was sugar (I don't even keep the stuff in my house).

What happened next made me think that Zoey has been learning how to read.
How did she know to sniff at the "open here" end?


I didn't teach her this, I didn't even notice it until I was loading the pictures onto my computer:



Once I got that package opened up I was ready to roll. These cookies were easy to mix up and they may be the best cookies that I have ever eaten. I normally don't even like nuts in cookies but these were seriously the best.

And as a bonus they were a total hit at the potluck. I wasn't planning to add these to the blog but after tasting them one of my friends told me that he would be "disappointed in me" if I didn't post these on the blog. I don't have a large fan base, so I can't disappoint the viewers that I do have!

Here's hoping that I get a new neighbor soon because Zoey and I cannot wait to make these again!


Edit: Since I wrote this post we did get some new neighbors, they just moved in this weekend! Looks like Zoey and I got our wish and we will be making these again soon!

Fruit of my labor

Well here it is folks: My first homegrown tomato- Oregon style.

Now, it would be too easy if that was the end of the story. And especially since this is my first ripe produce of the season, there was some excitement.

Or rather, lack of excitement. Let me explain:

On Sunday mornings I do my grocery shopping and this past Sunday as soon as I got home, I went to check on my prize tomato. This tomato is the tomato that started it all. It has been featured on 2 previous blog posts and it has been the first to turn even the slightest color of red.

Well, when I got to the backyard on Sunday morning it was missing! My little blob of red tomato was nowhere to be found. I looked closer hoping that maybe a ground squirrel had chewed it off or a robin had flown off with it in her beak. But no, the tomato was cut off the vine with scissors or a knife.

I tried to play it cool, but I was pretty sad. I had assumed the risk of planting vegetables in a semi-public garden and thought it was possible that an animal would eat my produce (fine with me) or that some person might come along and pick it.

Well, later in the day, one of my neighbors came up to me and told me that she had my tomato. She had seen one of the neighbor kids walking around holding it. She had saved the day by playing tomato police and keeping it safe for me. In the child's defense, he is probably only 5 years old and his mom also has some tomato plants in the back garden so he may have been confused.

Then last night he delivered one of my smaller tomatoes to my door. It was still very green, but it started to turn red today. It probably wasn't ready to be picked yet, but at least it ended up at my door.

I ate the first tomato on a sandwich with hummus and romaine lettuce and I will probably eat this little tomato tomorrow for a snack. Strangely the first tomato didn't taste any better than a tomato I would buy at the store, but it was still pretty fun to eat something that I helped grow.


I can't wait to get an earlier start on my garden next year!

Roasted Vegetables - Day 2

It's Day 2 and last night I had Roasted Vegetables for dinner. If you are making this soup, it means that you probably had vegetables for dinner last night too and I hope that you enjoyed them as much as I did.

The staple in this soup is barley. And unfortunately barley takes a little while too cook. On the plus side you can use that time to exercise, read a book, or watch reality tv because the barely won't be needing you. I can usually accomplish 2/3 of these activities during my hour of waiting. Of course, now you know what I watch on tv while I am exercising.

Roasted Vegetable Soup with Barley

Ingredients:

Leftover Roasted Vegetables from last night
1/2 cup of dry pearl barley (you can find this in the bulk foods section of the store)
6 cups of vegetable broth (or 3 cans)
1 T Italian spice herbs

Directions:

1. Heat the barley in 4 cups of the vegetable broth. Bring to a boil.
2. Cover and reduce heat to low for 1 hour.
3. Entertain yourself for 1 hour (see above).
4. Get out your little food processor and add 1/2 cup of the vegetables and 1/2 cup of water. Blend until smooth.
5. Add this mixture to the barley.
6. Add the remaining vegetables, broth and herbs to the soup and bring to a boil again.
7. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer for 10 minutes.
8. Serve and enjoy.

This soup is incredibly filling and you may not realize it until you are halfway through your second bowl. So... pace yourself.