Happy Birthday to my oldest grandchild and first grandson, Levon!


My husband's bread cooling on the kitchen counter this afternoon.


I know it's a little late for zucchini in our neck of the woods, but I had one in the refrigerator that a good friend had picked from her garden some weeks back.  I had forgotten all about it!  It wasn't a huge one, and a little more mature than I like, but it was exactly the right weight for this soup, and the skin was tender enough to use it in the recipe. Adapted from my book "The Fiber for Life Cookbook", I posted a slightly changed version of the recipe in the book on this blog in August of 2007.  But I changed the cooking method this time and roasted the zucchini (used less oil, too).  I added the garlic to the broth rather than cooking it with the zucchini this time, as well, resulting in a more assertively-flavored soup.  It really tastes like a very different soup than the original one!  The original is delicious, too, but more subtle-- I like them both, but this was perfect for a cold winter day!



Printable Recipe



Blend the nondairy milk and the silken tofu or cashews in a blender or with a stick/immersion blender until smooth.  Add the resulting "cream", and taste for salt and pepper. Heat briefly. Serve with vegan parmesan  sprinkled on each serving.


Enjoy!

 Winter is upon us already-- not what we like here on the West Coast (unless it's on a mountain)!

On the weekend I pulled out my old cooking notebooks.  I have ten that I kept from 1996 through mid-2008, handwritten, and full of recipes I was working on, menus we enjoyed or that I planned, my thoughts and opinions on all things culinary, recipes I wanted to try, food science tidbits, quotes from authors, etc..  It was quite interesting reading through the first two and I'm going to keep going, and perhaps share some things on this blog.  I realize that blogging sort of takes the place of the notebooks now, but not entirely, and I should really start one up again. Writing by hand is a totally different experience, and those thoughts and recipes aren't lost inside of a hard drive.  I can pull the notebooks out and bring back memories of many meals, experiences and milestones in my life.

But I still have one more that predates those nine-- one started in January of 1973, when I was a young mother of 3 and we were embarking on crazy homesteading adventures!  Here are some photos of the pages, all stained and, yes, actually yellowing!



It's written in pencil and is full of the recipes I used regularly, with some nutrition info of the times (protein was all-important!).  I can see that I was flirting with vegetarianism at the time, but it took me awhile to get there!

One of the recipes I made frequently in those days (it was quick, cheap, and good with the soups, bean pots and stews we often had) was biscuits.  The one I liked in those days was adapted from the old Tassajara Bread Book.  It contained eggs, though.  Over the years that I have been a vegan (about 22 now) I have tried and developed many biscuit recipes.  I have made them with Earth Balance and oil, low-fat, high-fat, even no-fat!  But, these days, we only have biscuits a few times a year and I make a veganized traditional biscuit.  Too much fat for our usual diet, but an occasional guilty pleasure!  But I thought that I'd make a batch to go with the stew we brought to have dinner with friends.  (Actually, my post on guilty pleasures prompted me to make them this time!)  We had leftovers with marmalade!  So here is my current favorite-- NOT low-fat, but worth the occasional foray down memory lane!

UPDATE: Here is my latest biscuit recipe from May 2012. It utilizes sifted whole grain flour and homemade baking powder.

UPDATE: see my recipe for Pizzelle Crackers, too!

This recipe has been a long time coming.  In 2005 I started having a conversation with an old friend of my daughter's, who asked  about making vegan cannoli without frying. One of the things I thought of was using vegan pizzelle rolled around a tube before it crisped up.  Of course, many others have done this, but not necessarily with a vegan pizzelle.  But, I wasn't willing to spend $60 Cnd for a pizzelle iron to test this out, so I put it on the back burner.  However, a few weeks ago I found a used Villaware pizzelle iron (baker) at Value Village for $10, and that was just too good to pass up, so I bought it. (The model I bought is the "Prima", which I don't think is available now, but they have other versions and there are several other brands of pizzelle bakers:  Cuisinart, Chef's Choice, CucinaPro .)


I've been too busy until now to try it out, but today I decided to give it a try.  Now, I'd already done some research on pizzelle, which evidently originated in the region of Abruzzo and its relatives (cialde--another Italian version, from Tuscany; French or Belgian gaufrette, Scandinavian krumkake, Dutch or Belgian stroopwafels, etc.), all of which are baked in specially embossed irons, similar to a waffle iron, but producing a very thin waffle/cookie. It seems that this is a very ancient type of sweet and in some parts of Italy, the irons would be made with family crests on them which would be passed down to each generation. 

Pizzelle and it relatives are typical of festival sweets-- rich with eggs, sugar, butter and sometimes cream. I decided to start with a recipe that contained little or no eggs, if I could find one, because that is usually the component that is the hardest to replace in some recipes. Cialde seems to contain fewer eggs than pizzelle, but the French gaufrette often contains no eggs at all, so that seemed a good place to start.  My main problem was what to use instead of cream-- I live on an island, as you may know, and our store doesn't carry soy creamer, so I couldn't use that. So I used soy milk (you can use any kind of nondairy milk, so it can be soy or nut-free) with melted vegan butter added.

They turned out very well on the first try, even with some whole wheat flour! The recipe is below.  They are delicious just plain with some powdered sugar, but I had a few spoonfuls of my Almond Creme Whipped Topping (which will be in my new book), so we each had one with the Almond Cream and some grated dark chocolate on top-- yum!



Then I remembered that I had some vegan Dulce de Leche in the freezer, so I got that out and made a "fake Stroopwafel", which is a Dutch or Belgian treat made of caramel sandwiched between thin waffle cookies.  The cookies are actually yeast-leavened and they are split in half while still warm to make very thin cookies.  I'll tackle those one of these days, but this version was very delicious!

There are many, many variations of these types of cookies-- lemon, chocolate, hazelnut, etc.-- to try out.  I have to look for a cone roller or cream cone molds, and cannoli molds soon to try homemade waffle cones and, finally, my own vegan cannoli!

Printable Recipe

BRYANNA'S VEGAN PIZZELLE, CIALDE, OR GAUFRETTE

Yield: 24
These were much faster and easier to make than I expected!

3/4 cup    nondairy milk  

1/3 cup    Earth Balance, melted  

1/2 Tbs    pure vanilla extract  

1 1/2 cups    organic powdered sugar  

3/4 cup    whole wheat pastry flour (I used white whole wheat pastry flour) 

3/4 cup    unbleached white flour  

1 Tbs    oat flour (grind dry oatmeal in a dry, clean electric coffee grinder or blender)  

FLAVORING:
For Pizzelle or Cialde:
1/2 teaspoon    ground anise seed
For Gaufrettes:
1/4 tsp    cinnamon  

1 pinch    nutmeg  

  

Combine the ingredients in a food processor until smooth.

Heat an electric pizzelle iron according to directions (it takes 7 to 8 minutes and usually there is a light that tells you when it’s hot). When it's hot, add a scoop of exactly 4 teaspoons batter to the middle of each cookie section. 

Close the iron and secure the handle. Set a timer for 30 to 40 seconds.

When the timer goes, open the iron and carefully loosen each cookie. 

Place on paper towels on top of cooling racks. Continue until you have used up all of the batter.

The cookies get crisp very fast. Sift powdered sugar over the decorative side of each cookie. Serve with tea , coffee or wine.

Nutrition Facts

Nutrition (per cookie): 69.5 calories; 38% calories from fat; 3.0g total fat; 0.0mg cholesterol; 31.2mg sodium; 44.8mg potassium; 8.9g carbohydrates; 0.9g fiber; 0.4g sugar; 8.0g net carbs; 1.7g protein; 1.5 points.

 Cooking Tips

1.) My pizzelle iron is non-stick, and the surface is in excellent condition. The instruction booklet (which I found online) instructed that there was no need to grease the cooking surfaces, but I found that I had to lightly and quickly grease the top and bottom with a wadded paper towel coated with shortening (see my homemade shortening recipe)  before baking each batch, or they stuck. 

2.) My iron's instruction booklet also recommended using one heaping teaspoon of batter for each cookie, but this yielded a small cookie-- which may be what you want. But for a cookie which filled each "depression" in the iron, I had to use 4 teaspoons of batter exactly.

Enjoy!

I was featured on livestrong.com re hosting a vegetarian during the holidays. You may not agree with all I had to say, but remember that I have a large non-veg family and I like to spend holidays with them! 


PS: the photos are some of the easy suggestions I had for omni's trying to provide a vegan entrée for their guest without stressing about cooking something unfamiliar!)


Read the article at:
http://www.livestrong.com/article/311443-hosting-a-vegetarian-on-turkey-day/



Happy Thanksgiving!

In this post about my new Cuisinart electric pressure cooker, I promised to post the very first recipe I tried in it, so I am doing so in today's post.  It's actually a vegan adaptation of a recipe that was in the instruction booklet that came with the pressure cooker.  I decided to try their recipe (more or less) so that I could learn the ins and outs of the cooker.  I didn't want to wing it with my own recipe until I knew what I was doing-- how much liquid you could use, etc., etc.

I chose the black bean soup because I love black beans, I had some in my pantry, and they are so good for you!  (See this info.)  It was a delicious whole-meal soup-- I will definitely make it again!  And it was finished in about an hour, with very little effort on my part, from UN-soaked dried beans!

Printable Recipe

BRYANNA’S VEGAN VERSION OF PRESSURE COOKER Cuban Black Bean Soup (with SPICY vegan sausage option)

Enjoy!

UPDATE: This post has been updated November 2012 to have only palm-oil-free products.

Country Choice Chocolate Organic Sandwich Creme

I had plans to start experimenting with various items on my list right away, but, to tell you the truth, I'm having a little vacation from serious cooking after the weeks of cooking for photographs!  In addition, I've been diagnosed with something called a "Bakers cyst" behind my left knee, so I'm supposed to rest my leg.  So, I was being a bit lazy today and started thinking about foods that really tempt me when I'm down in the dumps-- guilty pleasures.  I didn't want to actually eat any of them, as I've got to lose some weight gained in the last few weeks of cooking more elaborate meals than we are used to, but I thought it might be fun to make a list of some of my vegan "guilty pleasures" in the food department.

Below is my baker's dozen list of indulgences (it could be longer, but I have to stop somewhere!), which includes some things that we only indulge in about once a year, some items that we only eat in restaurants, and at least one that is very mundane!  None of them is a complete loss nutritionally, but they are all quite rich, sometimes downright oily-- definitely not everyday food for me!
UPDATE:  I had to add another one, so it's 14 now!

So what are your guilty pleasures?  (Food only please!)

14 of mine are:

#1: Country Choice Organic Chocolate Sandwich Cremes (veganessentials carries them, too)-- a once or twice a year indulgence--  I like the traditional chocolate with vanilla creme version, but there are others. Unlike my former favorite (Newman-O's) and every other vegan version of this favorite cookie, Country Choice Organic contains NO PALM OIL!



#2: Peppery Chinese deep-fried oyster mushrooms-- we have these at the Whole Vegetarian Restaurant in Vancouver, BC, a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant that was formerly the Bo Kong, on Broadway and 14th.  So yummy!  Here's a recipe, but use vegetarian "chicken" broth powder and use black pepper. There's a western version from Chef Ken Bergeron here.



#3: Brown Basmati Rice with vegan butter-- I don't know why, but I crave this sometimes!  (Generally I don't "butter" my rice!) On the rare occasions when I eat "buttered rice" I use my homemade palm-oil-free vegan "Buttah", but I understand that a commercial vegan palm-oil-free vegan spread will be available in North America soon.



#4: Glazed Yeast Doughnuts-- a childhood favorite. Here's a new recipe for glazed, yeast-raised vegan sweet potato doughnuts.



#5: Potato Kibbeh (recipe here), a Middle Eastern specialty made from  bulgur wheat, mashed potatoes, herbs, onions and LOTS of olive oil.  It's so delicious, but it just does not lend itself to low-fat versions.



#6: Vegetable Tempura (recipe below), another fried dish that we indulge in almost exclusively at Japanese restaurants, though our Japanese friends serve it sometimes and I make it once or twice a year.  I particularly like sweet potato tempura.



The odd time that I make it, here's the recipe I use:

Printable Recipe