Recipe For Fall

Fall is here! The air is chilly and crisp, my pantry is full of winter squash of all types, and my first pumpkin of the season is baking away in the oven, and the smells of a pumpkin caramel candle is wafting through the house. Layering up and going for a walk with some hot apple cider sounds really lovely right now. Fall is bittersweet for me as we creep nearer to the icy winter months, but this season is my favorite.

One of my new favorite recipes this fall is butternut squash pizza. I had not heard of this delicious treat before, but am very glad I tried this one. You can find it here at this link. The only thing I did different, was I omitted the tofu in the cheese sauce, and I found that it was an unnecessary ingredient as the sauce was delicious.

Here is some photo play by play of the recipe. I made the dough first so it could rise, but forgot to take pictures. The dough in the pictures is made with a spelt crust which turned out really good. The first time I made the recipe I used organic unbleached white flour and it turned out great as well. For those with gluten allergies, just substitute a gluten free pizza crust, and when making the cheese sauce, use a gluten free flour to thicken. I would say try a sweet rice flour, and avoid a bean based flour as the taste might overpower the sauce.

Now here we go with the photos. First slice up some butternut squash and onion.

And in case you love vintage dishes as much as I do, here is my very first vintage Pyrex bowl. I only payed $1.60 for it!

Toss the onion and squash with olive oil and salt and bake.

Mix up some dried rosemary, salt, and red pepper flakes with some olive oil. Brush this on your pizza crust after you have rolled it out.

Spread on some "cheesy" sauce.

Evenly distribute the roasted squash and onion. I also added some pepper to the roasted vegetables before I put them on the pizza. I would recommend it as it really enhanced the flavors. Another suggestion I would have is to sprinkle some salt on the edge of the crust after you have brushed on the olive oil mixture. It makes the crust so good!

Add a bit more "cheesy" sauce before you pop it in the oven.

Here it is all baked and ready to devour! Drizzle on some of the leftover olive oil mixture before you serve.

Yum! I am really in love with this recipe. The flavor combination of the rosemary, roasted vegetables, and sauce is really very surprising! Let me know how you like this if you give it a try.

What do you love about fall? I would love to hear any extra love about my favorite season!

Healthy Snack of the Week

Today's post is short and sweet, and focuses on one of my favorite times to eat. Snack time! I will graze throughout the day sometimes, and usually eat something before bed or else I will lay there with a gnawing stomach. I know this isn't the healthiest practice - eating at night, but don't foresee myself giving it up anytime soon. So, I try to motivate myself to eat healthy snacks. If there is no motivation, please pass on over that bag of chips, or some cookies. Or if there is not anything to instantly gratify my snacking rampage, that bag of chocolate chips.

One of my old favorites is this light lemon pudding. Monday night I motivated myself to pull out the blender and whip up this quick satisfying snack. All that is needed is a banana, half of an avocado, and some lemon juice. Easy!

Here is the recipe.

Light lemon pudding

1 banana, roughly chopped (or 1 and 1/2 depending on how small your bananas are)

1/2 avocado, peeled and roughly chopped

juice of half a lemon

1/2 banana, sliced for garnish

1 Tbs or more unsweetened shredded coconut (optional for garnish)

Toss the banana, avocado, and lemon juice into a blender and blend until smooth adding water as necessary to help the blending process ( just be careful not to add to much water, therefore making it to runny). Pour into a bowl and top with banana slices and coconut. Enjoy!

variation: Use lime juice instead of lemon for a key lime like flavor.

Amazing Kale

I absolutely adore kale. Although I do tend to buy it every week and then put off using it, and therefore feel bad about it sitting in my fridge wilting and losing nutrition. Something to work on!

It is such an amazing powerhouse of nutrition. Kale is high in calcium, iron, vitamin A,C, and K, and lutein. It has lots of beta-carotene and is a cancer fighting vegetable. You can't beat all of that! I use kale in green smoothies, green juices (my favorite being kale, apple, and lemon), and my all time favorite Kale Chips. Kale chips can be made raw using a dehydrator or baked in the oven. I prefer them raw as it keeps the nutritional enzymes in tact and has more of a fresh kale taste. They are still delicious baked, just make sure that you don't let them burn.

Try this recipe even if you don't particularly warm to kale. You might enjoy eating it this way. It definitely dispels my chip cravings as it is salty and crisp.

Kale Chips

1 bunch of kale

1 tablespoons olive oil

Salt to taste

Seasonings of choice to taste (garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, season salt, ect.)

Wash kale thoroughly and dry with a clean towel. Tear into fairly large pieces (these shrink down a lot in the drying or baking process) and discard the big parts of the stem. Place in a large bowl. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

Drizzle on the olive oil. A little goes a long way in this dish. With clean hands, get in there and massage the oil into the leaves so that each leaf is coated.

Sprinkle in your seasonings and distribute evenly using your hands again.

Spread them out on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes or until crisp. Make sure you watch them so you can prevent them from burning.

These are how mine turned out. They shrink down a lot.

Alternatively spread out the prepared kale onto dehydrator sheets. Dehydrate for 4-6 hours at 104 degrees F. Once the kale is crispy it is ready to eat.

This is how the dehydrated ones turned out.

Hope you enjoy this recipe. I know it doesn't seem that exciting being that it is a dark green vegetable and often viewed as tough and bitter. But give kale a chance, you might be glad that you did!

Basil and Eggplant

Basil is one of those herbs that makes me want to keep on living. The scent is amazing and the taste is incredible, especially when mixed with the right flavors. Pesto is one of the main ways basil is used in our house. Throwing the large leaves in my personal blender does not fair well for a smooth pesto sauce, so I find that the chiffonade style of cutting herbs works quite splendidly. To chiffonade, simply stack clean leaves on top of one another and roll together tightly. Then take a knife and cut across the roll to produce thin strips.

Toss into a blender with a splash of olive oil, some salt, and minced garlic. This is my recipe for pesto. Traditionally there is a nut (pine nuts usually) and parmesan cheese added as well. Pesto is delicious used as a sandwich spread, tossed with hot pasta, or as a base sauce for a pizza.

Raw Eggplant Pesto Pizza is one of my favorite summertime recipes. This recipe calls for a dehydrator, which really helps soften up the eggplant. Alternatively you can put these in the oven and bake them for a bit. I've never tried baking them, but it would be equally delicious.

Raw Eggplant Pesto Pizza

1 good sized eggplant

salt

prepared pesto

3 -4 mushrooms sliced (baby portobellos are good)

olive oil

tamari or soy sauce

fine chopped onion

sliced cherry tomatoes or tomato fine diced

First slice the eggplant into thin but not to thin rounds. You can leave the skin on or cut it off, as it is a bit tougher to chew. If baking, leaving the skin on should be fine. Salt both sides of the eggplant rounds and lay in a colander to drain in the sink. Leave them there for 10 - 30 minutes. This helps soften the eggplant as well as remove some of the bitterness.

Take the sliced mushrooms and put them in a bowl. Drizzle some olive oil on them, about 2 Tablespoons or more if needed. Pour in 1 tablespoon or more tamari and toss together. Set mushrooms aside to marinate for at least 10 minutes or more.

Once the eggplant has softened, rinse the rounds with water and pat with a clean dish towel or paper towel to dry. Spread a layer of pesto on each round and then top with marinated mushrooms (you can drain the marinade off, or just carefully dish out the mushrooms watching to not add to much liquid to the pizzas), tomatoes and onions.

Place these on a lined dehydrator try and dehydrate for 1 - 4 hours at 104 degrees F. The longer they dehydrate the softer they get and the more the flavors meld. Alternatively place on a lined baking sheet in the oven for 15 to 20 min or at 375 degrees F.

Here is a before and after shot of the dehydrating. The eggplant really softens up and the olive oil in the pesto sinks in to make it really amazing.

Here is another quick and easy dinner option using eggplant and basil. Salt and drain peeled eggplant rounds the same as described in the recipe above. Place on a oiled or lined baking sheet and roast for 20 to 25 minutes or until softened at 425 degrees F. Place them in a baking dish and top with tomato slices and basil strips. Then add some salt and pepper and minced garlic. Take some bread and toss into a food processor with olive oil, basil strips, salt, and some more minced garlic. Top the dish with the breadcrumbs and bake in the oven for 25 min at 425 degrees F. You can cover with some foil for the first 15 minutes to keep the breadcrumbs from burning. Enjoy!

Sorry there are not any pictures of the finished dish. I had some store bought breadcrumbs at the time so used those and it did not make for a very pretty plate of food, although it was very tasty. Day old sourdough bread would be perfect to turn into breadcrumbs for this dish.

Birthday Weekend!

I celebrated my birthday this past weekend. It was a nice weekend of festivities. Matt always tries so hard to make every birthday the perfect one. We both put so much pressure on ourselves when it comes to the other's birthday, that it can be quite stressful. As we discussed this last weekend, we decided to perhaps take it down a notch for future birthdays or just be happy with a nice dinner together. Not that we aren't happy with a wonderful evening spent together, we just tend to try to always top the past birthday. Last year Matt found a way to ship me vegan doughnuts from Pennsylvania. We also celebrated with local friends with a party in the park, and celebrated with some good friends who are an hour away at there home, as well as surprising me with a weekend visit from a good friend who lives far away. So all that is obviously pretty hard to top -- hence the stress.

Anyway this years birthday was wonderful as well. First off I made my own birthday dinner, and had some dear friends over to share it with us. I made Black Bean and Corn Empanadas with a spicy tomato sauce. Here is the recipe I used for the dough and the sauce. For the sauce I didn't have any sesame oil, so I just omitted that from the recipe and it worked out fine. This sauce was also really spicy, so if really spicy isn't your thing, use less hot sauce. I highly recommend using Sriracha brand hot sauce. I love the stuff! For the black bean and corn filling, I used this recipe. The recipe calls for bananas, but I just used frozen corn instead. I also added salt to the mix.

For dessert, I made Vanilla-Coconut Flan from Viva Vegan! by Terry Hope Romero. This is some amazing flan! I actually don't think I have had traditional flan before, but this was amazing and has me daydreaming of creamy sugary goodness. First I made a carmel sauce and then coated the dishes I used with the carmel.

The flan was made of a mixture of canned coconut milk and almond milk thickened with Agar flakes. The recipe says that agar powder works out better as it will fully dissolve as opposed to the flakes which leave a few chewy spots in the flan. I did notice some of the chewy bits, but it was not to distracting. Lots of vanilla and coconut extract really made this flan. I am sorry I don't have any pictures of the flan out of it's molds. I had the flan setting in the fridge up until it was time to eat it, so we resorted to eating it from the dishes. If you get your hands on this cookbook, you must make this Flan.

Matt also threw me a little get together with friends at our home. I was very proud that matt made this apple crumble for me and gloated about him all night for it. I am the dessert maker in our house, so when Matt makes something sweet, it is really special. He also made me cherry pie ice cream for my birthday, which awards him a bunch of gold stars in my mind. This may not be the prettiest apple crumble, but it was very very tasty.

We also headed to Columbus for the weekend to celebrate some more. Friday we spent a nice day shopping and galavanting around the city. Well there wasn't as much galavanting as I would have liked as the weather was scorching hot. We did some shopping at my favorite store Anthropologie. I scored this gorgeous skirt on the sale racks.

I just adore the little details of this skirt. The buttons, the pleats, and the lovely underskirt.

We also went to this adorable sewing shop Sew to Speak, where I picked up these three fabrics. I am in love with that chair print. I'm not sure what I'm going to make yet, but I am contemplating a purse out of either the purple or teal blue fabric. I would like to make a skirt out of the center piece. I am still a beginner at sewing, but hope to someday be good enough at it to be able to make clothing. I think a skirt is a good place to start. My friend Aubrey told me about this shop, and I hope to visit again the next time I am in Columbus.

We also ate some great Indian food and a raw blueberry cheesecake from Pattycake Bakery. Delicious!

Baking Binge

A baking binge is something I know all to well, and love just a bit to much. To me a baking binge is when in the course of 4 days or more, I can't help but pull out my mixing bowls and whip up something amazing each day. It can get quite addicting - the fun of stirring together the ingredients, and the anticipation of the taste of something delightfully sweet. Here is an example in pictures. This all happened about a month ago.

Sunday: Chocolate Cream Cheese Cupcakes from the cookbook The Joy of Vegan Baking.

These cupcakes were great and simple. Just a basic chocolate cake recipe and a cream cheese frosting that was tucked inside the cupcake. Next time you make cupcakes, let them cool all the way, take a knife and cut out a hole in the center (not the whole way thru), and dollop some frosting inside. Top it off with the piece that was cut out. It makes for an amazing frosting to cupcake ratio if the hole is deep enough and wide enough. Frosting with every bite is always acceptable!

Monday: Chocolate Chip Scones from the same delightful cookbook as above.

These are some of the best scones I have ever had. light and fluffy with just the right amount of sweetness. Sometimes I add a lot of cinnamon to the batter, and sometimes I just dust the tops with cinnamon sugar. These are especially good warm from the oven when the chocolate is still melty. Enjoy with a cup of coffee or Cafix (my choice of coffee substitutes).

Tuesday: Grape Pie - not pictured. I made this for a carry-in at work. It was sugar free, and kind of like thickened welches grape juice between a flaky crust. Definitely different, and not my favorite.

Wednesday: Gluten free Banana Bread from the cookbook Babycakes.

This banana bread has become a recurrence in my kitchen over the past few weeks. So good and sugar free too.
Here are some of the ingredients I used for the bread. Almond Breeze - my favorite almond milk, coconut oil, and Bob's Red Mill Gluten free All Purpose - which made for great results. The sweetener used was made from the sap of the coconut tree - amazing.

This bread is great warmed up in the oven an slathered with a bit of Earth balance Buttery Spread. Yum.

There you have it, a baking binge. I think I am due for another one in the not to distant future.

Vegan Frittata

I adore brunch. Perhaps it is my penchant for sleeping in that really draws me to the concept, or the possibilities of having a morning party. Whether we are cramming a handful of friends into our tiny apartment, or it's just the two of us spending a slow morning in the kitchen, brunch delights me.

This dish is a new brunch favorite of mine. I had read about chickpea flour based frittata mixes, and so began searching for the perfect recipe. Here is one that I adapted to my liking. This recipe is so versatile, so you can pretty much flavor it to your liking. For the one pictured below, I choose a blend of onions, garlic, mushrooms, spinach, rosemary, and thyme. I sauteed the onions, garlic, and mushrooms in a bit of water until soft, then threw in a few handfuls of spinach to wilt (you may need to add a little more water, so that the vegetables do not burn). Season this with salt, pepper, dried rosemary, and dried thyme.

Chickpea Frittata

3/4 cup of chickpea flour

1 cup of water

2 Tablespoons of oil (I used olive)

dash of salt

Mix ingredients together until smooth. Let the mixture set for a few hours or overnight. I mix this up the night before, cover, and place in the fridge so it is ready to go the next morning.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Pour into a greased pie plate (I used earth balance buttery spread). Stir in desired filling. Top with some salt and pepper.

Bake until golden brown and crispy around the edges. I forgot to time this, so I will guess that it takes about 30 minutes to bake, maybe more.

Cut into slices and enjoy. I served the frittata with an apple cinnamon coffee cake. I also think this dish would make a lovely light dinner or lunch served with a tossed salad.