Vegan MoFo 2012 Starts on Monday!

Prepare yourselves!  

Pa is prepared.

Can you guess why? 

Find out here at the stroke of Midnight on Monday!


Monday, October 1st to Wednesday, October 31st, 2012.

Dawn's BEST EVER Pumpkin Bread

You would never know it's high protein and whole grain.  Let's just do this, right?

Dawn's BEST EVER Pumpkin Bread
Inspired by the Pumpkin Spice Bread in The Joy of Vegan Baking.

Yields 2 loaves.
*However, I could go for two bigger loaves, so I do want to work to increase this recipe by about 25%.
As usual, use as many organic ingredients as you like.  Notes are denoted with a *.

1/4 cup Ground Flaxseed
1/2 cup Water
2 cups Sugar 
*or natural sugars such as date sugar, coconut sugar, etc. but I haven't tried it with these, so let me know.
1/3 cup Sunflower, Safflower or Canola oil
2/3 cup Unsweetened Applesauce.
1 can Pumpkin Puree 
*I used Wegmans brand this time and it was great, though not organic!
1 cup Protein Powder (it's OK if it's vanilla flavored)
*I used TJ's soy powder because I had it, and it was great.
2 cups White Whole Wheat Flour
*I only use King Arthur's brand here, it's the best by far.
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 to 1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1 tsp baking Soda
1/2 tsp baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt
Optional: 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts or chocolate chips per loaf.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and lightly flour two standard loaf pans and set aside.

In a small bowl, whip together flaxseed and water with an electric hand mixer until creamy and "eggy" looking (it will appear a bit gelatinous). You can also do this by hand (vigorously with a small whisk or fork) or in your food processor.  Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix sguar, oil, applesauce, pumpkin, and add the flaxseed mixture (your "wet" ingredients).

In another bowl thoroughly mix your dry ingredients: protein powder, flours, spices, baking soda & powder and salt.  Add them to the wet ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon or strong spatula until combined.  Alternately, to save the additional bowl from this step, I use a large fine mesh sieve that I rest over the wet ingredients.  I then sift in my dry ingredients directly into the wet ones, sort of mixing in all the spices and baking powder & sodas into the flour right in the sieve so it blends evenly into the bread.

If you want a plain loaf, pour half the batter into one of the loaf pans now.  For a nut and/or chocolate chip loaf, add the walnuts to the remaining batter and pour into your second pan.  My son wanted a chocolate chip loaf, so I sort of tricked him by only putting some chips on top of the loaf (there were none inside it).

Bake at 350 for about 50-55 minutes.  Let cool at least 20 minutes before slicing (I cool them on a baking rack still in the loaf pans).

These also freeze beautifully. I just cut fairly large pieces once they are cool and wrap those pieces in foil, label, and freeze.  Just put in the fridge overnight to defrost for an amazing breakfast or dessert base anytime.

What pumpkin recipes have you guys been making? I LOVE fall.

P.S. Vegan MoFo is coming!!  You know, that month long event where hundreds of bloggers sign up and attempt to post 20 times about vegan food in October? And people have lots of fun themes and write tons of posts and complain all month about how hard all that work is, and then are super sad when it's over?  OH YEAH.  Well, it's almost here.  I'm still refining my theme and trying to get my head in the game, but I DID sign up!  It's not too late if you want to sign up, too, you have until Wednesday, September 26th.  You don't need a vegan blog to do it, any blog will do, but your posts need to be about vegan food in some fashion to count for MoFo.

Last year, as my first recipe for Vegan MoFo, I made my Pumpkin Biscotti!

Well, I'll be seeing you guys a LOT soon :-)  Prepare yourselves!

XOXO

Summer Surprises: Snakes and Shakes!

Surprise!

Pa can still dive, he's seventy five! Go Pa!

What's that in the tree?

Surprise! It's Shady the Scare Snake protecting our figs from birds (it worked, at least for a while!).

Surprise! Our CSA farm was open for picking on Labor Day! Oh yes!

Those beans were delish! Aren't the purple ones pretty?

Hey, ever think those blog giveaways are rigged? I used to, until...

 Surprise! I won TWO giveaways this summer!  Nava's new book AND Dreena's new book, YES.

It was too hot to cook anything from the books, so...

 Spinach Mango Blend, inspired by Nava.  

 Strawberry Hemp Blend, inspired by Dreena! 

I learned that hemp seeds are great in blended drinks, they aren't "seedy" at all.

I'll get to some cookin' from those awesome books in the fall! Thanks, ladies for the wonderful giveaways!!

 CSA Week #13 (8/22/12): Three lovely eggplants, including a beautiful ghost eggplant! hmmm...

Surprise!

I love eggplant (I never really LOVED it before the CSA eggplant, it was AMAZING).  And, surprise! I didn't have to skin it, salt it or drain it, it was so sweet and yummy just sauteed right up in lemon, garlic, olive oil and salt.  SO GOOD.

Surprise!

 You thought I forgot to post these, right? Nope, here they are.  

CSA Week #14 (8/29/12): Lots of tomatoes!  

 CSA Week #15 (9/5/12):  Lots of greens, including kale (my favorite!), and all the tomatoes pictured below!

Lots of beautiful tomatoes two weeks in a row meant only one thing.  We had to learn to can!

 Surprise! My first canned tomatoes.  

And homemade raspberry jam (from local, organic raspberries!)

 Summer's almost over!!  Learn to put em' up, folks!  Don't forget to dry those herbs and freeze that pesto!  There's LOTS more awesome produce to be had for these last few days of summer and first crisp days of autumn.

Have you all had any surprises this summer?

Summer A La Mode

I have literally only used my oven twice this summer.

Last week, to make this:

Rosemary Potato Chips (from my amazing CSA potatoes). 

And this: 

In that same oven. Breaded Eggplant (oven baked).

And this week to make this:

Dr. Fuhrman's Zucchini Bread (uses 4 cups of grated zucchs, yeay!)

And this:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie (I halved the recipe). OH YES. 

Otherwise, I've been mostly making things that can be minimally cooked (like on top of the stove for a few minutes) or not cooked at all.  And with this kind of CSA haul, it was pretty easy.

CSA Week #12 (8/15/12): A dozen potatoes, a big bag of giant shallots, zucchini (4), a pint of cherry tomatoes, slicing tomatoes (5), the most amazing tasting eggplant (3) , a HUGE bunch of scallions, ghost peppers (3), sage, parsley, and the BIGGEST watermelon in the world.

We got to our CSA pick up first and had choice of all the melons (they were outside the box, so we got to choose our own).  Of course we chose the monster one!

With which I made this:

Juicy Watermelon Sorbet (from Vegan A La Mode).  I used black and white chocolate chips to mimic the black and white seeds in the watermelon :-)  

I have made four ice creams so far from the book: PB Bombshell, Fresh Corn, Peach (with cookies instead of a raspberry swirl), and now the Juicy Watermelon Sorbet.  This is an amazing book!  

Other things I did not cook:

Raw platter from Week #12 with a Savory Cashew Dip 

Hazelnut Chia Pudding (4 T chia seeds, 1.5 cups organic hazelnut milk, 1 tsp vanilla, 2 T organic maple syrup. Shake in mason jar, leave in fridge overnight.  Top with walnuts, fruit, or anything else you like). 

More seeds.  A LOT more seeds.   

Our giant heirloom sunflowers were unbelievable.  So were the three other varieties (teddy bear, black-eyed's, and another kind I forget).

What have you guys not been cooking?

Hottest Summer on Record?

Here's what I've been doing:

Sitting around staring at my Cold Brewed Coffee (seriously, I've had it sitting there for like five days, too tired to strain it and clean up!) and pondering the hottest summer on record. 

I've also been trying to use up my CSA boxes without turning on my oven or using my stove top burners.  Last CSA box I put up here was from 7/11/12, so here are the rest of them:

CSA 2012, Week #8 (7/18/12).  White onions (10+), zucchs (4), basil, garlic, Swiss chard, beets (4), one melon, one garlic head.We started getting onions on July 3rd (three lovely fresh ones with the tops attached).  I thought that was fine, but it's been like a HUGE bag of about a dozen onions every week since then, white ones, red ones, yellow ones, so we made an Organic Onion Stock on 7/22.  Also, on 7/18, I finally had to start cheating on my CSA with the Farmer's Market because we don't get any fruit (except for a small melon here and there, as you see above, and that one half-pint container of blueberries in June and the PYO strawberries) and still hadn't gotten tomatoes yet.  So, the peaches & tomatoes (and green peppers!) above are from the Westmont Farmer's Market.  Not organic, but oh well, they are New Jersey Specials!

CSA 2012, Week #9 (7/25/12). Finally, tomatoes!  Slicing tomatoes (5), a pint of cherry tomatoes, bunch of (tiny leaved!) basil, interestingly a bunch of cilantro (so hot, I have no idea how we got cilantro at the end of July), first eggplant, 2 little purple cabbages (delish!), 3 zucchs, 2 corns (my kiddo ate both ears, I just steamed them quickly and they were gone!), another small melon, and about a dozen more onions (!).  I made fresh tomato sauce (sometimes known as Pasta Primavera) with the tomatoes, onions & garlic from the week prior, a beautiful Asian Cabbage Slaw (pictured below), Basil/Cilantro Pesto cubes, and just ate the melon as-is.

Look at those cabbages! 

Here's the slaw:

CSA cabbage, basil, onion, organic carrot (non-CSA), and organic tofu with a simple dressing of sesame oil (2 T, I think) and 1 tsp of Hot Chili Oil, and salt to taste.  

Basil from Week #9 (7/25):

Basil from Week #10 (8/1/12):

Basil/Pesto Cube Station Set-up:

Purple Basil Cubes! Want to make them? Here's how.

I also cheated again that week (Week #9, 7/25) with the Farmer's Market:

Peaches & Nects from the Farmer's Market.  It's on my way from the CSA pick up!

CSA 2012 Week #10 (8/1/12).  Tons of potatoes, more (yes more!) white onions, shallots the size of your head (pictured below), zucchs (3), eggplants (4), tomatoes (5), purple basil, one melon, a bouquet of organic flowers, and I think a garlic head I already put away.  

Shallots the size of your head! I love shallots, but boy, this is a lot of shallots!

Flowers:

They were a little droopy but totally perked up with my magic flower water concoction (organic sugar and a tiny bit of bleach) after a few hours.

And, finally, this week's box:

CSA 2012, Week #11 (8/8/12): zucchs (5), slicing tomatoes (only 2, due to the super hot weather), small not quite pint of cherry tomatoes, peppers (2), potatoes (a lot), head-sized shallots (a lot!), eggplants (3), scallions (a huge bunch) and a head of garlic.  And my cat.  I've done next to nothing with this box since Wednesday, I am really tired and the heat has been relentless.  I think I ate a green pepper and some of the cherry tomatoes.

I've also been making ice cream.  This Peaches & Cream one was one of my favorites:

Peach Ice Cream (base from Hannah's book) with Farmer's Market NJ Peaches, Organic Coconut Milk, and Organic Vanilla Sandwich Cookies added (Country Choice Organic brand, they are vegan!), it was amazing.  

That's about it, folks.  I really need to filter that cold brewed coffee now.

What have you guys been making in this (fast becoming the) hottest summer on record?