Banana Cream Pie

I found out this afternoon that we had been invited to our next door neighbour's backyard BBQ this evening. Knowing that there would be very little vegan food at this shindig I thought I would donate a pie to the festivities. And what an easy pie it was! All of the ingredients were either purchased pre-made (the graham cracker pie crust was vegan) or easy to mix. There was actually nothing to "make".

 Easy as Pie Banana Cream Pie

You will need one ready-made graham cracker pie crust, two bananas, one package of silken tofu (I used Mori-Nu) and one package of Mori-Nu Vanilla Pudding mix. That's it!



Here's what you do:  Slice the bananas into the pie crust.



 Put the tofu into a mixing bowl (or food processor) and whip it until it is smooth.



 Add the vanilla pudding mix and whip for about two minutes. You will have to scrape the bowl down a few times. Pour the pudding mix into the pie shell and put it in the fridge to firm up - it takes at least two hours.





 That's it! If you wanted to jazz it up you could put sliced bananas on top of the pie as well as at the bottom.

A Different Kind of Fruit Cake

A Different Kind of Fruit Cake

I think I'm a member of a fairly small club: people who like, no, love, fruitcake.  I am aware, however, that not everyone shares my love of these dense, delicious cakes.

I saw an interesting recipe last year, then lost it, for a different type of fruitcake, and I have tried to recreate it here.  This cake is like a pineapple upside down cake - the fruit is stirred into a melted brown sugar/ earth balance mixture and placed in the bottom of the pan, with the cake batter poured on top and then it's baked in the oven.

The cake recipe is my sister's creation.

Cake

Dry ingredients
1 cups flour
3/4 cups sugar
.5 tsp salt
1tsp baking soda
1/2 tspbaking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 of a 450 gram package of glace fruit

Wet ingredients
1cups soy milk with 1 tsp of apple cider vinegar -set aside to curdle
1/3 cup of oil
1 tsp vanilla

Topping
1/3 cup of Earth Balance (or other vegan butter)
1 cup of packed



Direction for the Cake

Preheat oven to 350. This makes a small single layer cake
Mix dry ingredients together til all mixed up.
Add all wet ingredients and mix well.
Lightly grease the sides only of an eight inch round or square cake pan.


Directions for the topping
MIx the sugar and Earth Balance and heat in a saucepan until the Earth Balance is melted and the brown sugar is well mixed in.  Stir in the glace fruit.


Assemble the cake
Pour the fruit mixture into the cake pan and spread it evenly over the bottom of the pan.
Pour the cake batter over this mixture and bake it for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean.  Allow the cake to cool in the pan on a wire rack for about 15 minutes.

Place a cake plate or cake stand over the cake while it is still in the pan and carefully invert the pan and the cake plate.   The cake should come out on its own, but if it needs a little help, you can tap the bottom of the pan with a woodn spoon.  If some of the glace fruit mixture is left behind i n the pan, you can scrape it out and carefully place it on the cake.

Pumpkin Muffins

It's a glorious first day of autumn here in Toronto.   The temperature has climbed to at least 24 degrees Celsius (which is just over 75 degrees Fahrenheit), and once the rain stopped the day was fantastic.

Looking out in my back garden, I can see the signs of winter coming - the leaves are turning on our trees and our plantings are starting to look a little sad in places.  We purchased what we thought was a squash plant at the garden centre this spring, but it certainly looks like a pumpkin now - big and orange and round.   It made me think of pumpkin soup, pumpkin pie, and all things pumpkinny, and so I though I would make my pumpkin muffins which I adapted from a recipe on the PETA website:  http://www.peta.org/living/food/pumpkin-muffins/

Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees

1 3/4 cups of all purpose flour
1/4 cups of rolled oats (not steel cut)
1/8 cup of hemp hearts
1 tablespoon of non-aluminum baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon of ground ginger
3/4 cup of chopped walnuts

1 1/4 cups of pureed pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
1/2 cup of soy milk (I used soy milk but I have made this recipe with almond milk and rice milk)
1/3 cup of mild vegetable oil (I used canola, but sunflower oil would work)
3 tablespoons of maple syrup

Prepare your muffin pan: if you use paper liners, place them in the muffin pan.  If you prefer to cook without liners, lightly grease your muffin pan with your favourite oil or shortening.

Put all of the dry ingredients, except for the walnuts, in a large mixing bowl and stir them together.



Here is the flour waiting to be joined by the other dry ingredients.




Here I've added the oatmeal.



The rest of the dry ingredients.

Put all of the wet ingredients into a medium mixing bowl and stir them together until they are well mixed and the oil is completely incorporated and not floating on the top.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until you don't see any white flour sitting at the bottom or on the sides of the bowl.

Add the walnuts and stir them in.

Fill your muffin cups to the top, put the pan in the oven and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a tester inserted into the muffins comes out clean.



Variations - you can use pecans if you prefer them to walnuts.

I usually add cranberries but I forgot I used them for the cookies I made last week, so I was all out of them.

A handful of shredded coconut is also nice in these muffins

Squash Soup

It was cold and rainy when I got home from school yesterday.  It seemed like the perfect day to have soup for dinner.

Last week one of my neighbours gave me a squash from her garden. At the time, I cut it up and put it in the freezer, thinking I would use it next month for Thanksgiving, but I decided instead that it would become the base for my soup.

I placed my  enameled cast-iron Dutch oven on the stove, added about 1 tablespoon of canola oil and switched the stove on to heat up the oil.

Putting on my onion-cutting goggles (I hate the fumes that make my eyes sting), I chopped an onion into chunks, and put it the pieces into the pot to cook.






While the onions were cooking, I grated some fresh ginger, about a tablespoon, and added it to the pot with the onions.  Next I coarsely chopped about three cloves of good garlic and added the pieces to the pot.



When the onions were translucent, I added the squash (it was a big squash, so if you were buying acorn squash, I would suggest getting two of them!), one chopped carrot, and  1/2 chopped sweet potato to the pot, and I added enough vegetable broth to cover everything.  I added about a tablespoon of freshly ground black pepper and about one teaspoon of Trader Joe's everday spice.   I let the contents of the pot come to a boil, then I put the lid on, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.



At this point all of the veggies in the pot were very soft.   Now comes the fun part.  Using my immersible hand-held blender (it's a Kitchenaid with ten speeds - super handy!) I pureed the soup in just about fifteen seconds.  This is much quicker, neater and safer way to puree a pot of soup: there is no need to be moving hot soup around the kitchen to put it in and out of a blender or food processor.





I served it into bowls and we ate it in the living room sitting in front of our fake fireplace.

Refrigerator Oatmeal

I may be unusual among oatmeal lovers in that I love my oatmeal plain - no brown sugar, no maple syrup, nothing but oatmeal.  From time to time I toss some toasted walnuts on my oatmeal, but usually I just have it plain and natural.

I have been reading quite a bit lately about refrigerator oatmeal, and I kept thinking I would like to try it, so last night I made some to sit in my fridge overnight.   Instead of rolled oats, I decided to make my first foray into refrigerator oats with steel cut oats.   I was in Buffalo, New York, over the weekend and found some quick-cooking steel-cut oats at Trader Joe's.  I bought them thinking that I would cook them the regular way, and then on the drive home, I started thinking about trying them as refrigerator oatmeal.

So this is what I did:  I mixed 1/4 cup of Trader Joe's quick-cooking steel-cut oatmeal with 2/3 cup of soy milk (I used President's Choice Original Soy Milk - available in Loblaw's in Canada), 1 teaspoon of chia seeds, 1 tablespoon of maple syrup (I know, I know, I just said I like my oatmeal plain and simple) and 1/2 cup of sliced strawberries.



I placed the oats, the soy milk, the chia seeds and the maple syrup in a two cup screw-top zip-lock jar and then stirred everything together, then I added the strawberries, screwed the lid on and placed the jar in my fridge.



In the morning the chia seeds had expanded, the oatmeal had softened to a nice degree and the gentle aroma of strawberries pervaded the mixture.  Even though I like my oatmeal plain, I don't like it cold, so I put it in the microwave for about thirty seconds.  The verdict?  It was wonderful and made a great start to another week of work.

Vegan on the Road

I am in Buffalo this weekend to help support the American economy by shopping with my sisters.  We are staying in a suite-style hotel, so that means we have a nearly full-size kitchen complete with a stove and fridge and a dishwasher.  This little kitchen even comes equipped with utensils, plates, cups and glasses and pots and pans.

One of the things we were looking for on this trip was a vegetable spiralizer.  We have seen so many amazing vegan recipes that call for spiralized veggies like zucchini or other squash and veggies.  We saw some at the vegetarian food fest in Toronto last week, but because we were on foot, and we had already bought so much stuff, we knew we would not be able to carry everything we bought plus the spiralizer.

We were not able to find a spiralizer at the stores we visited in Buffalo, but we did find a little gizmo called a Vegelizer at Macy's, which turns veggies into spaghetti-like strands.   We decided to purchase some zucchinis and sauce and make dinner.

Here is my sister using the Vegelizer to turn zucchini into strands.

  Here is a plate of the strands getting ready for a quick plunge into boiling water.

Here is the zucchini pasta ready to go!  I should point out that if the sauce looks a little watery, it's because of all of the utensils that the hotel provided in our kitchen, a colander was not among them, so we were unable to properly drain the zucchini strands after their brief stint in boiling water.

It was tasty, but the final verdict on the Vegelizer is that because it does not have a hand crank, it takes a lot of strength to turn the zucchini in the gizmo.   We think it would be really hard to turn a carrot using the Vegelizer, but we will continue to use the ones we bought (we don't live together so we each bought one) with zucchini.

A Restaurant Review

I know I said that my blog would be about recipes, but I was at a nice restaurant yesterday and I would like to review it.

The restaurant is called Salsa Rita's Fresh Cantina.  It's a chain restaurant that I have visited on previous occasions when I have been in New York State, where I am visiting this weekend.

Salsa Rita's is a tex-mex restaurant with many options for the vegan patron.

I ordered the small burrito bowl, which was entirely customizable.

I had a small scoop of rice, black beans, roasted red peppers and onions, two scoops of guacamole and some black olives.

It was fantastic!!!  I wish I was going to be here longer so I could go again, but this is a meal that could easily be made at home.  I think I will make it, for a future vegan mofo post.  Maybe with a tex-mex dessert too!

Spicy Hummus

Note: This recipe was donated by my sister Linda.

This hummus recipe is the easiest I know of and includes ingredients found in almost every pantry. I cheat a bit with canned chickpeas and ready-chopped garlic, but it makes for a fast and easy dip or sandwich spread with no preservatives like the store-bought kinds.

I take this for lunch in a wrap with crunchy veg - red and green peppers, red onions, celery, or whatever is on hand.

Today I added something special (and not shown with the basic ingredients here)....Akabanga Chili Oil. My sister and I were in Rwanda in July, and we saw tiny bottles of this sauce on every table in every restaurant we visited, so of course we had to buy some before we came home. It's pretty potent and a drop is all you need. Really.   If you like it HOT enough to make your nose run add two drops. If you want smoke to come out of your ears....3 drops. Serious stuff. One drop in two cups of hummus is enough to give this a kick. But if you are sharing with kids, I'd recommend leaving it out. It's still a great basic hummus.

Prep time for this dip is about 10 minutes.

2 cups of rinsed , ready-to-eat chickpeas
2 tbsps tahini
3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 clove chopped garlic
Salt to taste (I used Himalayan Pink Sea Salt)
1/2 cup water or as needed
1 drop Chili oil (or any spice you want a kick)

Add all ingredients except the water to a food processor . Using the S-blade, process until smooth. Scrape down the sides, and if needed, add a thin stream of water while the processor is running until you get the consistency you like. Turn the finished hummus into a container. Cover and refrigerate.

Keeps well in the fridge for about a week .

Yield - 2 cups

Mushroom Pasta

Note: This recipe was donated by my sister Linda.

This is an easy recipe I make when I need comfort food without a lot of effort. I love cooked mushrooms and I love  pasta and I love garlic. This is so easy to throw together . You can make the sauce in the time it takes to boil the pasta water and cook it. I like this with bow-tie pasta - basically any kind of pasta that doesn't take too long to cook al-dente. There are also no real ingredient measurements - I just make this one up as I go along. It always ends up tasting the same!!

Ingredients

Olive oil
1 clove crushed garlic - or more if you like things really garlicky - I do!
Sliced fresh mushrooms of choice - I used large plain white mushrooms  - about 4 cups sliced should serve 2 people
Green onions  - this is optional. I only mention it here because the picture of this meal happened to include them. I might leave them out in the future because they didn't add anything to the flavour .
Cracked black pepper.
Pasta of choice

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and add enough pasta to serve  whoever you are feeding.....
Meanwhile,  add a few tablespoons olive oil to a skillet. Turn the heat to medium high and add the crushed garlic. Fry that up a bit and add the sliced mushrooms.   As the mushrooms are sautéing, give them a good stir to coat well with the garlic-olive oil mixture and cook the mushrooms down. Reduce heat and cover to allow moisture from the mushrooms to be released. This should take 5-10 minutes.
Drain the cooked pasta when it's al-dente and add to your skillet mushroom mixture. Add some cracked bell pepper, stir it up, serve it and enjoy!!

Apple Carrot Cranberry Ginger Cookies

I couldn't decide what to call these cookies, so in the end I went with Apple Carrot Cranberry Ginger Cookies.  It's a little bulky, but it accurately describes what is in these very tasty treats.  I adapted the recipe from one I originally saw in John Robbin's book May All Be Fed: Diet for a New World.

I had a bottle of ginger syrup that I bought at my local health food store and I wanted to use it.  It's a little strong for pancakes and waffles, and had been sitting in my pantry for a few months.  Time to use it up!

Here is the recipe:

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Liquid Ingredients
1/2 Cup of unsweetened apple sauce
1 Cup of ginger syrup (but you could use agave or maple syrup)
1/2 Cup of canola oil
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Dry Ingredients
2 Cups of all-purpose flour
2 Cups of rolled oats
1/4 cup of hemp hearts
2 tsps of baking powder
1 tsp of baking soda
1 pinch of salt

Add-Ins
1 Cup of grated carrots
1 tbs of grated fresh ginger
1 Cup of dried cranberries (you could use raisins, chopped dates, currants, or dried cherries)

 Here are the carrots getting ready to be grated.  I used a simple hand grater, and then laid on the elbow grease.  You could also put the shredding attachment on your food processor and grate the carrots that way.  It would certainly be faster and would take less work.

 This is not a difficult batter to mix.  Some cookie batters are kind of stiff and hard to stir.  This batter is actually much more liquidish than you would be expecting.  Don't worry - the cookies firm up in the oven.

Directions
1.  Stir dry ingredients together.
2.  Whisk wet ingredients together.
3.   Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and also add the grated carrot and ginger.   Mix together.
4.   Add the driedcranberries

Place by rounded tablespoons onto a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet and cook for 15 minutes.

Here are the cookies before baking...

... and here they are, nicely golden, fresh from the oven!

Veg Food Fest

My sister and I visited the Veg Food Fest at Harbourfront in Toronto today.  It was a great day for spending a long time outside because it wasn't too hot and it was overcast and threatening rain for most of the day.  There was so much to see there, both inside and outside, that had it been sunny and hot, I would not have been able to stay so long.  I'm going to review what I saw and tasted while I was there.

If a person had arrived at the Veg Food Fest hungry and without funds, she could not remain hungry for long, because there were dozens of vendors giving away all sorts of samples at their booths.    I tried some chocolate coconut water - it was great - and I bought a whole box for my young great-nephew to take to school for lunch.   I thought it would make a pleasant change from having a juice box every day.

We went to a booth operated by Buchie and Sash where we sampled their vegan cream cheese dips - they had an herb & garlic dip, a spicy chili dip and a dill dip and all three were fantastic.  I bought a container of all three, and the people behind the counter were kind enough to store my dips in their fridge until it was time for me to leave.  We sampled tofurky sausages (great), coconut bacon (really good, but I wish the pieces were longer so they could be used in sandwiches), and we bought a donut hole from a vegan bakery.

We purchased a concentrated grape syrup which is made from the same grapes that are used to make ice wine - the syrup is used to make salad dressings.  It was really tasty and when paired with sunflower oil, it was absolutely divine.  We also purchased two bottles of ready made salad dressing - a greek salad dressing and a Caesar salad dressing.

We went to the indoor section of the festival and looked at the cookbooks on sale in the area that was being run by people from the Toronto Vegetarian Association.  Linda bought the Afro-Vegan Cookbook by Bryant Terry.  I bought it in the spring when it came out - I have it on my ipad - and I was thinking about it when we were in Rwanda this summer.  We were at a restaurant and some people in our group ordered the peanut and squash soup but it wasn't vegan so I didn't have any.   I kept thinking that when I returned home, I would make some of that soup.  I owned a lot of the books that were on display and that made me happy to see.

We found ourselves standing in front of the So Delicious coconut milk ice-cream booth just when a woman behind the counter was handing out whole ice-cream sandwich bars to people and she gave one to me and one to my sister - now that's what I call a free sample!   Of course the ice-cream sandwich was fabulous.

I think the oddest moment of the day was when we found the Field Roast booth.   I was really looking forward to seeing their new breakfast sausages and was hoping against hope that I could buy a meatloaf from them.  But what we saw instead were sample packages, not for sale, and three posters bearing enlarged sections of Canada's food laws stating that Field Roast could not sell their sausages in Canada and call them sausages unless the items they were trying to sell as vegan sausages had a certain amount of protein and a certain amount of fat.  It all seemed very strange to me because the Tofurkey people did not appear to have this problem.  Nonetheless, I signed their petition and I said I would email my MP to tell him how displeased I was about this.   And just when I had located a good local store where I could buy these sausages in Scarborough!!!!  Now I will have to continue to stock up in the US whenever I visit.

So all in all we had a great time - we sampled all sorts of great food, we talked to all kinds of brave and committed people who worked hard for the benefit of animals and we made a few donations here and there.

I would definitely go again next year.

Easy Biscuits

This is my first Vegan Mofo post!

I experience a particular satisfaction when I can take a non-vegan recipe and make it vegan, and this is what I have done with this biscuit recipe which I adapted from the King Arthur flour company.

The biscuits are tasty and they are quick and easy to make.

The recipe called for King Arthur Self-Rising Flour, but that is unavailable where I live (in Canada) so I used Brodie XXX Self-Rising Flour.  Instead of cream, I used Wilderness Family Naturals Coconut Cream. That's it - just the two ingredients.

Directions

Pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees.

Mix together Brodie XXX Self-Rising Flour and the coconut cream in equal parts by weight, not volume.

Drop by tablespoons onto parchment on a baking sheet (if you have a cookie scoop this would be the perfect place to use it), and brush the tops of the buns with some coconut cream, then bake for ten minutes or until golden brown on top.

That's it!  Quick and easy biscuits that my taste testing team loved!

The flour and the cream before mixing...

and after mixing.

Waiting to go into the oven...

hot out of the oven

Ready for Earth Balance margarine or jam, or anything else you like to put on biscuits!