granola bars

today i took to the task of making some granola bars. i've been a bit under the weather lately and, ta da, lack of cooking and posts.

Granola Bars

1/2 c each corn syrup and maple syrup (i only used the sc cause i had some leftover from camp, feel free to use only maple syrup or brown rice syrup if you feel rich)
2 tb each molasses and peanut butter
1 tb oil

combine all that in a pan and bring to boil for a couple minutes, stiring to combine things together.

mix in a large bowl...
2 c rolled oats
1/2 c wheat germ
1/2 c nuts/dried fruit mix

stir it all together and add the liquid, mixing to combine. press into a bread pan and bake to dry out for about 20 minutes in a low oven (200?). let cool, slice into bars, and enjoy.

Dinner Plate

here i offer to you a real picture of something i cooked: my vegan dinner plate! here we have some fronch toast with maple syrup (from VWAV), tempeh sausage crumbles (also VWAV) with califlower, and an orange. yumm. washed it down with some juice. let the picture talk.

the toast is made with the leftover almondbutter and jelly toast. oye, talk about delish!

Almond Butter and Jelly Bread

after a suggestion on vegweb boards, i took to making some peanutbutter and jelly bread.

however, i didn't have peanutbutter. so i used almond butter.

the recipie is on vegweb, so you can find it there. or click this sweet link.

my only issue with it is that it is a bread machine recipie. i think, for the love of good food, that bread machine recipies should have manual instructions. like, i cook in an oven.


i will see if ben jam'in (the roomie) will facilitate picture taking of the bread. it's in the oven now. it smells good.

Raw-some

this weekend i not only managed (after a couple of years of ho-hawin') to join the local co-op. this is my efforts to get out of shopping mainstream markets and support member owned and local farmers. and weekly working members get a sweet 26% discount on their foodstuffs. sweet!

in turn of these events, i've decided to up the raw in my diet. why's that? the easiest reason is that raw stuff is good for you. more basic, less processed, pure food. the second is that i hate doing dishes, so the less pots and pans to wash, the better (i make a huge mess when i cook). right now i'm making some raw cracker things. we'll see how they turn out. one advantage of having a gas stove is that it is always about 100 degrees in that thing, perfect for making/drying raw food. i'm impatient and wanted something today (well, in the oven today) so i'm soaking some flax, pumpkin, seasme, and some other seed (i forget?). mixed in some lemon juice and soy sauce (not raw, but i have a vegan kitchen, not a raw vegan kitchen!) I'm gonna spoon it into my muffin tin to get nice little shapes and dry them out. i'll let you know how it works.

here are some sprouts i'm growing. the flaxbread stuff turned out great, but i took it to my office and left it there, so no picture.

Eggplant and Hummus sandwhich

so at the store today i got some rolls (buy one get one, even!).

eggplant was also on sale. a couple weeks...eh, a month ago i went to a diner and had an awesome eggplant wrap. they deep fried the eggplant! it also had some hummus on it.

i've never been a fan of eggplant. it was always overcooked. my last attempt to cook with it (2 years ago!) was bad. i don't remember what i was trying to do with it but the rest of it just rotted in my fridge. they look so pretty, but i've yet to unlock the mystery of zee eggplant.

so i cooked up a batch of beans in the pressure-cooker and fried slices of eggplant (thin ones, salted and diped in flour) and popped them on a roll. it's great.

however, i've learned not to mix hot garbonzo beans with parsely. it cooked. it smells awful and the hummus has a strange "cooked green" taste to it. oh well.

so if i can't eat enough sandwhiches to get rid of the eggplant, i also picked up some pasta sauce to smother it in. pasta sauce makes everything taste better, like hot sauce or salt.

soymilk

i made my first batch of soymilk tonight. as you can see in the picture, it looks like soymilk. its white. white and yummy. as the book that came with my maker suggests, i added 3 tbs of brown rice syrup and 1/8 tsp salt. next, time to figure out how to make chocolate silk flavored milk.

those brown things are the chewy chocolate chocolate chip cookies from the ppk. i swear, they are the best cookies ever! i make them for my homies at school sometimes and they always get eaten up. the spots in the soymilk is from dunking, of course.

bagel dogs

woo! bagel dogs tonight!

on the way back from boston, we stopped at one of the masspike stops and all there was was a mc donalds, ben and jerrys, honeydew dougnuts, and a pretzel place. the pretzel place had prezel dogs, and it reminded me of my childhood favorite treat...the bagel dog.

so i set off on to create a veggie recipie for one...

remembering that i'm an eyeballer, you can adjust the recipie to suit your needs. Hope you're familiar with making yeast things...

Bagel Dogs

2 c flour
1/2 c water
spoon of sweetner of choice
pinch or so of salt
1/2 teaspoon of yeast

some vegan hot doggies

Mix everything minus the flour in a bowl and let the yeast do its thing. Mix in flour and knead into a nice dough. Let it rest for a bit and then divid into 4-5 hunks. Roll out into a rectangle and roll up a hot doggie in each--bagel dog style. You can boil them for a couple minutes if you want, or you can just pop them in the oven (I did, I'm lazy) and bake at 400 or so until toasty golden done. Then eat with lots of good mustard. OHH. bagel doggie heaven.

i gave up on the camera option (unless you want to send me one...). I will be drawing in the awesome program PAINT all the junk I make now. But really, a picture is a picture, drawn by me or not.