Monthly Archives: October 2011

Oct 24, 2011

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Vegan MoFo – MoFo Monday and the Beginning of Apple Week.

Like I said on Thursday – We have too many apples. Luckily there are many things that can be done with apples, but too few of them seem to be savory. Well. I’ve followed in the footsteps of other vegan bloggers in the last few weeks and taken their recipes and made them at home.

First item on my list was this Apple Spice Muffin recipe from Bite Me (I’m Vegan) (don’t they just look perfect for breakfast?). While getting into the apple peeling, chopping mode, I ended up opting to make some unsweetened apple sauce in my slow cooker. There is always a use for it, especially when I’m baking, so I threw some of it in a jar, and some of it in snack bags in the freezer. My winter instinct to stockpile food for the cold months ahead is in full force.

apple spice muffins


Having gone grocery shopping yesterday, we picked up a couple of beautiful baguettes from ACE bakery, one of them didn’t make it past 7pm last night, drowning in a mix of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The other one was supposed to turn into crostini today, I decided it would be a waste of sandwich potential. But what kind of sandwich? Serendipity brought me a brilliant and relevant idea from The Verdant Life - Basil Apple Mustard Panini Sandwiches! Where have you been all my life savory apple sandwiches? It doesn’t matter, I’m just glad they’re here now.

mustard apple basil sandwich


I found Cupcakes and Kale’s (we meet again) recipe for Apple Salted Caramel Cupcakes through Winged Snail’s Leibster Blog award post yesterday. But they are gluten free, so I’m saving them for Gluten Free Wednesday. Which lead me to this recipe and beautiful pictures of Salty Medjool Date Caramel and apples from V.K. Rees’ photography blog.

I want to make this Apple Upside Down Cake from Liz Lemon Nights (and adapted from Smitten Kitchen) some day soon. I have some not so pretty apples that are looking for a home – preferably one outside of the compost bucket. There is a good chance my lentil, sweet potato, apple and carrot soup will make an appearance this week, and honestly, I can’t wait to make and eat it.

Sayward/Bonzai Aphrodite went to an Apple Tasting event, and it reminded me how much I wish I could attend one of those. I’ve missed them a few times when I was visiting Portland, but we have them here in Ontario and I have not put in enough effort into making it happen. To Do: Apple Tasting. Or an apple festival. We missed several of the major ones last month – like the Brighton Applefest in eastern Ontario, the Ruthevan Apple festival and the St.George Applefest. All in September. Something to make a note of for next year!

Oct 20, 2011

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Things I love Thursday – Vegan MoFo – Cats, Pizza, J, and lentil soup

I love Thursdays as a day of reflection. It’s been kind of gloomy outside this week, so it’s nice to think about all the good stuff going on, and it also makes me appreciate having the option of staying inside with my kitten for a while while it rains.

Occupy Toronto - the crowd


This past weekend was the beginning of OccupyToronto and I love that I live in a country where public demonstration is permitted, and people can have a reasonable expectation of being heard. I think regardless of how you feel about the protest or its impact, there is no denying that there is a feeling of global community being built as a result of this movement, in addition to offering a visual representation of people that are struggling, and want change. That and Occupy LOL Street.

Occupy Toronto - I was told there would be cake


I love the magical combination tomatoes, lentils, onions/garlic and some spices can create on a lazy afternoon. Throw it all in a pot, cook and eat something that just tastes warm and comforting.Which is what I’m cooking up right now!

Gluten Free Vegan black magic from Magic Oven


I love the Black Magic vegan pizza J ordered for dinner last night. After taking advantage of the Queen Street E (Toronto) Magic Oven‘s Wednesday all you can eat pizza night a month ago, and trying a diverse assortment of pizzas, we finally found one that’s just brilliantly good. Pesto, sundried tomatoes, KALE and daiya. I also love that someone will deliver vegan food to our house.

More Apples!


I love Apples. They come in so many delicious varieties, and it’s possible to get really tasty local ones.Which is why next week is going to be a week of apple dishes (while still keeping with my other themes.) I’m pretty excited about it, because we still have at least 20lbs of apples at home from when we went picking them earlier in the month.

Emmie


I love that Emmiecat has decided that on my pillow or just to the right of it, is a great place to sleep. Sometimes she wakes me up with scratches, but lately I’ve been waking up to purring.

We also recently purchased (where by we, I mean J did) a food processor/blender and immersion blender AND finally – I have a rolling pin. I love all of these things because they make more things possible and cooking a heck of a lot easier. This is the first time I’ve ever had a food processor, and I never realized how useful and versatile they are. I mean, obviously I have a vegetable heavy diet, and I’ve just taken the hand chopping process as coming with the territory…BUT this changes everything!

Favourite Blogs of the Moment  (But, really, I love yours too.)
- http://cookeasyvegan.blogspot.com/ - Andrea’s Easy Vegan Cooking. I don’t know what it is, but everytime I visit her site it makes me smile. I like her writing style, the photography, and how generally friendly she seems to be.
- http://vegansonthemove.wordpress.com/ - Gabrielle and Ms.Panda/Lisa are great people IRL, but I’m digging the posts about awesome vegans, recipes, pictures and Buhbuh.
- http://getsconedpdx.com/ - Jess Scone, currently the VeganMoFo theme is brilliant, with animal companions writing in about their humans. Emmie cat wants to do it, but she’s been busy sleeping and also, very importantly watching my pots cook.
- http://muffintopped.wordpress.com/ - Emily has a way with words and her entries are genuinely fun to read whatever they happen to be about.

Other stuff: Hugs. Burning the candle at both ends. Learning new and interesting information for free (Thanks Stanford and MIT). Local cleaning supplies that are okay to be used around children or animal companions, don’t cause my skin to react in angry allergic ways, and generally don’t suck. The way I feel right after I go running. The normalization of veganism and plant based diets. Amazing recipes. Hot cups of coffee. Blanket forts. green onions. cocoa. Cucumber mousse. Bad Lipreading.

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Oct 19, 2011

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Should have been cookies – Tuesday Tasty Treats – VeganMoFo

Sometimes I make complete disasters in the kitchen. I’ll admit it. I inherited my father’s tendency to throw anything interesting together in a pot and hope for the best. This has served me well. It had wide ranging applications, especially when cooking at food not bombs, or limited ingredients. It’s encouraged creativity. It’s resulted in happy full bellies. And reasonably diverse and nutritious food.

But, there is another side to that: The disaster. That dish you don’t know what to do with. The muffins missing salt, the tbsp of baking soda instead of the tsp. The oops, I dumped a box of cayenne in this. The “Why did I think pickles and horseradish would be good in this soup?” moment (no, this hasn’t happened…. yet). The rock hard muffins. The flaky  muffins that should have been cookies. Or my least favourite… that I like to call Spicy Boring – where your meal is overtly spicy, but overall, it’s missing something and it’s boring.

Well, one of those things happened to me today. I threw things together, and even as I was doing it, I knew it would not turn out exactly as I wanted it to. I made the equivalent of cookie muffins today. They should have been cookies, why I put the batter in the muffin cups, I don’t know. Coconut flour, carrot, apple and oatmeal are amazing together. The flavour was incredible. But the texture… they just fell apart.



Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to have a great time “Taking care of them”. And perhaps… some day in the future, I’ll use the same recipe for cookies or a pie.