Holiday Creating

After my long Holiday hiatus, I am back to posting. The busyness of this time of year has kept me away from the computer, and instead, I've been stuck to my sewing machine, riding for hours in a car, and celebrating Christmas with the family.

Sadly, baking and cooking were bottom barrel and this post depicts the one batch of cookies I took the time to create. No recipe this time, as I am still working out the kinks. I was attempting a sort of raw sugar cookie, but it turned out to be a bit harder than desired and needed a bit more of something. But all in all, I was pretty happy with the experiment.

Here is a little picture show depicting the process. Enjoy!

Hope you all had a very merry Christmas! The New Year is just around the corner and we are planning to lay low and just relax as Matt and I have 3 days off together. Perhaps we will cook up a New Years Day feast and invite friends over. What are your plans?

Acorn Squash and Sweet Corn Soup

Today is a short and sweet post. One about a soup I made last week. It didn't take long, and it was oh so delicious. If you try it, I hope you agree. It is a snap to make, especially if you have baked your squash ahead of time (instructions for squash baking and pureeing at the end of the post).

Hope you are all having a wonderful December day!

Acorn Squash and Sweet Corn Soup

serves 2-3

1 acorn squash baked until soft, and pureed

non-dairy milk of choice ( I used unsweetened almond)

1 cup frozen sweet corn

salt and pepper to taste

ground cayenne pepper

Mix together acorn squash puree and enough of the milk

to make it soup like. Heat on medium high and once the soup

is starting to get hot, add in the sweet corn. Season with salt and

pepper. Let the soup simmer or heat 10 minutes and enjoy with some

cayenne pepper sprinkled in.

I also added some Daiya vegan cheddar to my bowl before

ladeling in the soup. It was delicious.

This is how I bake acorn squash, or any squash. Wash the squash thoroughly, slice in half long ways, and scrape out the seeds (or scrape them out after it is baked). Pour some water into a baking dish and place the squash skin side up into the water. The water should be about 1/2 inch deep, or a bit more, as it sometimes will dry out while it is baking. Bake for about 45 minutes in a oven preheated to 375 degrees F. When you can easily pierce the squash with a fork, and the flesh is soft, it is ready. To puree, scrape the flesh out of the squash skin and blend with a bit of water until smooth. You can also refrigerate the cooked squash and then puree it right before you need to use it.

Sick Days

These past few days have been sick days. The kind were Matt and I lay on the couch or in bed for hours watching movies and internet TV. Not a bad thing, but considering the amount of kleenex and toilet paper (due to lack of kleenex), not very good for the trees.

Saturday we had a dinner planned that we sadly had to cancel. We were having brunch for dinner, and it was going to be epic. I had made a double batch of cinnamon roll dough (enough for 32 rolls), and 4 batches of vegan frittata. Luckily, I had not cut up all the sweet potatoes yet!

So in between simultaneous nose blowing and ginger tea drinking, and countless hours of televised entertainment, this is what I made and ate.

Lunch was a light nosh of cucumbers and some hummus I whipped up. This was delicious, especially if you like garlic. I didn't have tahini on hand, so for those of you with sesame allergies, this recipe is for you.

Delicious Tahini Free Hummus

1 can chickpeas

generous drizzle of olive oil

few squeezes of Sriracha hot sauce

1-1 1/2 teas garlic powder

salt to taste

olive oil and smoked paprika to garnish

Put all ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth.

garnish with a drizzle of olive oil and some smoked paprika.

Then that afternoon, regardless of my congestion, I made all of the cinnamon rolls. Sadly, I did not have much cinnamon, so some of them were cardamom rolls. I used the cardamom for this loaf of Cardamom Chocolate Swirl Bread.

Simply roll out some of your favorite cinnamon roll dough, spread on some earth balance buttery spread, sprinkle evaporated cane juice generously over top, dust with cardamom and some chocolate chips. Roll it up and fit it into a bread dish. and bake until thoroughly cooked through at 350 degrees F.

Here is how messy I get when baking. Note that the kleenex box isn't usually involved.

Here is the unbaked loaf.

Here is all the cinnamon roll delights that I put in the oven.

And here is the final products.

The lighter ones are the cardamom rolls.

Some shots of the bread.

Let me tell you, the combination of chocolate and cardamom is amazing.

Today, there was no exciting cinnamon roll baking, but there was carrot, apple, ginger juice drinking,

and miso soup making.

Along with many more hours of laying in bed watching hulu.

Hope your weekend was a bit less tree destroying than ours.

Happy Monday Morning!

Week of Simplicity

It has been a simple week, full of normal daily activities, and simple food.

Lots of soup that is.

Monday when I got home from work I couldn't stop dreaming about Mama Peas Creamy Broccoli soup from this post. So I through the ingredients on the stove and it wasn't long until I was enjoying the whole potful.

That night for dinner I made another soup, Moroccan Bean. Equally delicious, and was eaten up too quickly to document.

Fast track to Wednesday and I was feeling a bit under the weather with a scratchy throat. Simplicity is definitely in order, so after my work Christmas party, I came home made a big cup of miso broth and laid in bed to read.

Since dinner was pretty much shot with my choice to lay in bed over cook, I had a simple meal of some of the last of my fall bounty. A little Earth Balance, salt, and pepper, made simplicity mighty good.

First Batch

This week has been full. Full of work and friends. Not a bad counteracting combination. One of my out of town friends came to visit me on Thursday and we made my first batch of sugar cookies. Typically, cut out cookies are only made at christmas time in my house. Chocolate chip cookies are a bit more instantly gratifying.

I think I did something wrong with this batch as the cookies were a bit chewy. Perhaps it was the extra flour I through in to make it more dough-like. Perhaps I wouldn't have had that problem if we didn't have the creamed butter and sugar sit out for an hour waiting for more vanilla extract. Regardless, they were sugary and delicious.

And pretty too!

Gotta love an Indiana cookie cutter.

My Husband Makes the Best Fries

On Tuesdays I work one of the longer shifts of my week. I get off at 9 pm and am typically ravenous. Well perhaps not that extremely hungry, but getting there. My 4:30 meal at work is usually a salad of some sort and then I have a snack of a piece of fruit at 7:30, neither of which last's long enough for me not to be hungry before bedtime. As a result Matt usually makes us dinner, or second dinner. A house favorite for Tuesday's is fries, sometimes the kind you take out of the freezer and toss on a baking sheet, and sometimes Matt makes them from scratch. He has mastered the technique, and I bow before his french fry making skills. I'm ok with letting him be the better fry master, as I use the flattery to my advantage when I don't want to cook.

He said he will share the recipe once he has perfected it. Cutting the potatoes thin and making sure each piece has a fine coating of olive oil are two of the key steps. The base seasonings are salt, black pepper, and paprika (smoked is nice).

Here is the finished product. Yum!

On a completely differant note, I wanted to share some foodie finds from the Thanksgiving weekend. A favorite thing to do when visiting Matt's family is to stop at a Trader Joe's outside of Chicago. There is also a Whole Foods around there as well, but we haven't figured out how to get to the right exit yet. Hopefully next time we can stop there as well. One unpictured item that we bought is the unsweetened mango strip. You must try these if you ever happen on a Trader Joe's, they are very delicious and quite addicting. Another find that I was pretty excited about was baking chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate. I have tried to find these chocolate discs before, but had not had any milk-free luck until I spotted these.

Another find that I was pretty thrilled about was this canned jackfruit at an Indian grocery store next to this delicious restaraunt we ate at with Matt's parents. They had never been to an Indian restaraunt before, so it was a learning experience for all. I hope to make Jackfruit Carnitas out with the can of fruit and see how we like it. We also picked up some curry powder which looks pretty good as well. Perhaps I will make curry tomorrow!

Another hot buy of the week was seaweed snack chips. I was a little worried about the terriyaki kind, but it ended up being delicious and I couldn't get enough of them. Matt's mom thinks they taste like her vitamins, and I couldn't disagree more. Delicious is what I say!

Hope you enjoyed my grocery finds! Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Thanksgiving Recap

Today was a reality check back to work and normal life. The fun of the holiday is over and the anticipation of the next is setting in. So, I am enjoying our christmas candle, mint tea, Sarah Mclachlan's christmas album, and reminiscing about the past weekend.

Since we had our Thanksgiving meal on Saturday, I spent Friday afternoon baking a dessert and spending time in the kitchen with my 11 year old sister in law. It was a great time. She is so kitchen savvy and managed to turn a vegan cupcake recipe into a non-vegan one. Oh well.

I made Pumpkin Pecan Brownie Pie (found in that list of recipes) by Oh She Glows. It was amazing! I am going to make this again and again, it was so delicious. I already signed myself up to make it for our staff christmas party. The dessert is made up of a pumpkin brownie on the bottom, topped with pumpkin pie filling, then topped with shaved chocolate and pecan topping. All of you must make this!

Here is the before the oven picture.

While I put that together my sister in law made these mint chocolate cupcakes. Sadly, there was no mint extract, so we substituted mint hot chocolate mix. Aren't they cute!

Here is the pie right out of the oven.

My other contributions to the Thanksgiving meal was a delicious fall inspired salad and Cinnamon Sweet Potatoes and Chickpea Salad, another recipe from Oh She Glows. You must check out her recipes. She has created some true gastronomic gems!

The salad was spinach tossed with balsamic vinegar and maple syrup as a dressing, topped off with chopped apples and pecans.

Another shot of the sweet potatoes.

And for the grand finale of the meal - dessert. Salivate a little and head into the kitchen and make this now. You will not be dissapointed!

Hope you all had a lovely holiday!