Vegan Bake Sale for Haiti Today

I spent Saturday cooking for today's bake sale. I made thyme spiced mixed nuts, vegan rice crispie treats made with Dandies, and curry spiced cashews.

Come out to Ten Thousand Villages between noon and 4 PM to buy some treats and donate money to support relief in Haiti.

Curry Spiced Cashews

2 tablespoons non-hydrogenated margarine
4 teaspoons curry powder
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 cups roasted cashews

Melt margarine over medium heat. Add the spices and cook about 30 seconds or until fragrant. Take the pan off the heat and add the cashews. Stir to coat the cashews evenly with the spice mixture. Spread in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes at 350 degrees F.

Austin Vegan Bake Sale for Haiti

Come out to Austin's vegan bake sale for Haiti this Sunday, January 24th, from noon to 4PM at Ten Thousand Villages (1317 South Congress Ave). All money raised will be donated to Food for Life Global.

Many thanks to Ten Thousand Villages for letting us use their space and to Wheatsville Coop for donating supplies.

In Texas, vegan bake sales are also being held in Houston and Denton. There's a growing list of vegan bake sales for Haiti on the Post Punk Kitchen blog.

If you're interested in baking for the Austin bake sale there's information on Facebook and this thread of the VRA.

Use It Up Cinnamon Rolls

I had about half a can of pumpkin puree leftover from making pumpkin muffins last week. After digging through my recipe collection, I came across this pumpkin cinnamon roll recipe. It fits in with my goals of not wasting food and mastering cooking with yeast, if not my goal of eating better.

The recipe uses 3/4 cup of pumpkin which is perfect. A can of pumpkin puree has about 1 3/4 cup of pumpkin. Most recipes use 1 cup of pumpkin, so this is the perfect recipe for using up the leftovers.

The recipe is from the cookzine Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk, issue number 2. I've tried several recipes from both issues, and they've all been great. Both issues can be purchased from Herbivore Clothing.

Grandmothers and Brownies

The world would be a much better place if everyone had a grandmother like mine. She is my biggest fan. I never finish a call to her without hearing gobs of praise. No matter how mundane or off-track my life seems to me, my grandmother always deems it "creative" or "adventurous." Every call ends with her asking me, "Have I ever told you how proud I am of you?"

In a world where we can be very critical of ourselves and those around us, it's comforting to have someone to turn to who will always be in your corner. It would be a poor life if everyone around us only heaped praise. But it would be pretty poor, too, if we only poured on the criticism.

Food is like that, too. Green leafy vegetables, beans, and whole grains are important. But a diet shouldn't list too far to either extreme. We need room for the things that serve no other purpose than to make us happy.

These are the brownies I made as a little kid, from a recipe written on an index card in my grandmother's handwriting. In jr. high, I made these moist brownies at least once a week, sending them home with my best friend without even taking a bite. (Sugar was strictly forbidden for diabetics in the early '90s.) But something about the motions of baking just seemed right to me.

Last Thanksgiving I found out that this isn't my grandmother's recipe after all, but Katharine Hepburn's. But that's OK. It will always be my grandmother's recipe to me.


Katharine Hepburn's Brownies, Veganized

1/2 cup Earth Balance (or other trans-fat free margarine)
2 squares (2 ounces) unsweetened chocolate
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup pureed silken tofu
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

Melt the chocolate and Earth Balance over a double boiler. Remove from heat and stir in sugar until well combined. Add the pureed tofu and vanilla and stir together. With just a few strokes, stir in the flour and salt. Spread the batter in a well-greased 8" x 8" pan. Bake at 350 for 40 to 45 minutes. Cool before cutting.

sesame balls

After a meal at a local Chinese restaurant (China Palace), Dewey and I were served a plate of sesame rice balls. Crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside, with a center of red bean paste, they filled us with ambition. Somehow, wanting to recreate this freebie dessert snowballed. The next thing I knew we were in Half Price Books buying a wok cookbook and making a pledge to cook all our meals in the wok this week.

Here's night one. Spring rolls (not pictured), followed by the sesame balls that started it all. They're just like we remember. We used this recipe (it took a bit more water than the recipe called for. And we made our own red bean paste, too.

Thanksgiving and more soup

Third time is the charm for Thanksgiving. I made these mushrooms in puff pastry for the vegetarians at my Thanksgiving. It was a success, but what was even better was the pie. If you haven't tried Isa's smlove pie yet, do it now! My entire pie was gone before the family even sliced into either of the two Sara Lee pumpkin pies. Not that I bragged all weekend or anything.

I wasn't measuring since the mushroom puffs were just for myself, but it's onions, mushrooms, and pecans sauteed in oil with a splash of brandy, a big splash of soy sauce, nutmeg, and pepper all wrapped in puff pastry squares.

It's also soup season again. Here's cashew-butternut squash soup with red curry drizzle.

blueberry crumple

This was the last week for strawberries at the farmer's market ($1/pint!) and the first week for peaches and blueberries ($3/pint!). The blueberries were so cheap, I bought two pints. So now I have three pints of fruit. Did I mention I have a hard time eating fruit? A pint of blueberries is going into the freezer, but that still leaves two pints of fruit for berry desserts. And so we have, individual blueberry crumple. Not quite a cobbler, not quite a crumble. Still delicious.



I was out of oatmeal, so I made my usual crazy cobbler recipe without the oatmeal. Like most of my favorite recipes, it doesn't really have a recipe.

Blueberry Crumple

Mix equal parts flour, margarine (or oil), and sugar*. Add a sprinkle of cinnamon if you feel like it. The mixture should be crumbly. If it's too wet, add more flour and sugar. If it's not sticking together enough, add more fat.

Put your berries in a baking dish. If they aren't very sweet, add a bit of sugar of your choice. Sprinkle the flour mixture on top and bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes or until it smells too good to wait any longer.

*If you want to go the traditional crumble route, add an equal amount of quick or regular oatmeal.

Toffee bars

These bars are a beloved family tradition passed on to me from my mother who got the recipe from her mother who probably got it from a newspaper or magazine. Or maybe the back of bag of chocolate chips. But three generations in the U.S.? That's tradition. After this weekend, I can now testify that they even taste good when baked on a Wednesday in one state and consumed on a Sunday in a different state. Magic.

When I cook, there's one thing I always keep any eye out for: dishes. Any recipe change that lets me spend less time washing dishes is an improvement for me. So this method is slightly different from the way my mom (and grandmother) make it, but they'd never know it.

A Lazy Person's Toffee Bars

1 cup non-dairy margarine
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 drops maple or rum flavoring OR 1 tablespoon maple syrup
6 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup walnuts

Combine margarine and sugar in a bowl. Mix in flour and flavorings (or syrup). The batter will be dense. Spread in a pan and smooth with a knife or the back of a spoon. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes. Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the top of the bars and bake an additional 5 minutes, or until the chocolate is spreadable. Take the bars out of the oven and quickly smooth over the chocolate. Crumble the walnuts evenly over the chocolate. (A less lazy person might use pre-chopped walnuts.) Refrigerate the bars until the chocolate cools enough to maintain its shape (about 15 minutes). Cut and serve.

Oh, Sugar Sugar: A Photo Essay

I spent a week in December making edible presents for my family. At left, candied grapefruit peel. I made this (and candied orange peel) by boiling pieces of citrus peel in water a few times to get rid of any bitterness and to soften the peel. Then I boiled it in a sugar solution, and tada, candy!


I did the same thing with pieces of ginger. Except, the ginger needs a lot more sugar to get that crystallizing action going.



And here's the grapefruit peel dipped in chocolate along with some pieces of dried apricot. I must admit that I did not dry my own apricots. A girl only has so much time!

Some of the crystallized ginger took a bath in the chocolate too, but at that point I was too exhausted to take any more photos.