No religion here, just chocolate ;)

 

Although I am not religious by any means, I sure do love chocolate and I thank this wonderful earth for producing such an amazingly complex and decadent food.  My family and I celebrate Easter in a “let’s get together and have dinner” kind of way.  As a kid, I would wake up on Easter morning and find colourful tin foiled eggs laying all around the house.  My brothers and I would wake up to a basket in our room so we could fill it with the eggs we found.  Of course as a kid, the chocolate was filled with milk products and other unidentifyable ingredients with funny names.  

This year I felt a tinge of sadness as I walked by aisles of easter bunnies, cadbury cream eggs and chocolate shelled mini-eggs.  I felt a little left out.  Of course that feeling never lasts and when I got home my grandma and mother decided to equip me with an easter egg chocolate mold and two giant bars of dark chocolate.  

My younger brother and I got to work last night and created six solid easter egg halves.  Two we mixed with peanut butter, one we added some rice krispies (organic ones of course :P) and the rest we left as plain, luscious chocolate.

The results:  Extremely decadent and wonderful!

I win and the animals do too!  I would say this was a success.

For lack of finding the traditional wicker baskets and coloured hay I grew up with, I positioned my eggs as such:

 

 

Regardless of whether you can or can’t eat chocolate, you can still enjoy these pictures and hopefully make yourself a cup of hot carob.  

 

 

HOT CAROB DRINK:

200 ml Rice milk

1 tsp carob powder

1 tsp sugar (or other sweetener I presume)

Vegan cream (optional)

Vegan Carob chips (optional)

Warm the milk in the microwave or a saucepan until it is steaming. In your cup add the sugar and carob powder and add a small amount of milk and stir. Add in the rest of the milk. I find that the carob powder doesn’t dissolve too well and tends to sink to the bottom of the cup so you need to stir before drinking. I like to serve it with some carob chips on the edge of the saucer or if I am feeling really indulgent with some vegan cream sprayed on top and carob chips sprinkled on the cream.

(From: http://www.recipesforvegans.co.uk/hotcarobdrink.html)

 

 

 

Waking up with waffles

I recently found these wonderful little waffles in the frozen foods section of the supermarket.  They are gluten-free but may have quite a few irritants for some.  The ingredients: water, organic corn flour, potatoe starch (deadly nightshade), organic soybean oil, granulated sugar cane juice, organic flax seeds, organic buckwheat (another possible allergen), bakindg powder, organic potatoe flour, soy lecithin, organic amaranth seed, organic quinoa seed, sea salt.  

So although these are not the best option for me personally, I thought some people would like to know of these.  They taste mostly like your average frozen waffle, however they do have a very lovely nutty flavour, and they are incredibly versatile!  They also have that wonderful quinoa and amaranth.  Enjoy 🙂

 

Pumpkin seed yeast Bread

 

I saw this Gluten-free, vegan yeast bread here:  http://glutenfreevegan.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/yeast-bread-v10/ 

She also has a yeast free version!

It looked so delicious I decided to try it.  

 

Here are some pictures:

 

 

And now for the rundown:

I used the two and a half cups of water in the beginning which was a big mistake because I had to keep adding more flour later to make it thick enough.  I didn’t follow the instructions so well..woops.  It did rise beautifully though!  

Once baked and pulled out of the oven, the texture was wonderful.  Light and slightly chewy but soft with bubbles inside!  It has quite a hard crust which I wasn’t fond of but some might like this.  The taste was rather bland so I would recommend adding some seasonings or just more nutritional yeast before baking.  The one good thing about it being somewhat bland though, is that it’s neutral enough for it to have so many topping possibilities.  And OH! the possibilities.  This bread is good enough for a sandwhich, and you don’t hear that very often (or ever) with gluten free bread.  How about some “cream cheese” with jam?  Or peanut butter and jam?  Or chickpea salad!  Avocados and olives and spinach with dressing…..mmmmm.

One thing to note also is that I put it in my fridge overnight and in the morning it felt like dry crumbs, but as soon as I micro-waved it for a few seconds (about 30), it felt like it was fresh out of the oven again.  Wonderful!

Coconut “shrimp”

Now, I know fried food is a drag on the body, but sometimes I can’t help myself.  While looking in my freezer and realizing I still had a good 2 pounds of faux shrimp from many months ago, I figured it was time to do something with them.  My first thought was coconut shrimp  since I never could resist it while growing up.  So I ended up looking for a coconut shrimp recipe (non vegan) and veganizing it.  It had a gluten free option (but with egg) so I tried that and used ener-g egg replacer which I was sure would fail.  And it did.  However I have to say the shrimp was lovely even though the coconut fell off during cooking.  I wouldn’t put the recipe on here seeing as it was time consuming and not well worth it.

I will however post some pretty pictures of the wheat batter version I made for my family, since the pictures look great and it tasted amazing too (apparently).

 

 

This is the gluten free version!

 

 

The Wheat batter version!

BioFeedback

I must mention this because this is of course a site that I hope many people with food allergies will eventually visit. I have been receiving a treatment called biofeedback for my food allergies for about a year now. Here is a definition of what it is:

“Biofeedback is a form of alternative medicine that involves measuring a subject’s quantifiable bodily functions such as blood pressure, heart rate, skin temperature, sweat gland activity, and muscle tension, conveying the information to the patient in real-time. This raises the patient’s awareness and conscious control of their unconscious physiological activities.” – wikipedia.com

When treating food allergies, you are asked to sit or lay down and relax. A small machine with a metal plate sits on a table with a metal pen on a cord attached to it. A sample of the allergen is placed on the metal plate (I.e. cat hair, a piece of tomatoe, etc) and the machine is turned on. Up to five allergens can be done at once. The pen is then dipped into water which has been charged with silver and is pressed against certain points on your body (Ex. the forehead). There are a number of points that need to be in constant with the pen throughout the sitting. Once this is done, the doctor or naturopath taps your chest repeatedly for a minute or so.

Each allergen is “supposed” to take between one and three sessions.  It is said to most likely take a few months after your LAST session before you feel any better. 

Biofeedback is said (by Naturopaths) to work in 80-90% of cases and works for any kind of allergy at all. It can also apparently help with other things such as diseases (ex. diabetes) or psychological disorders (ex. anxiety). 

I tried it for many months and wasted a lot of money.  It was useless.  I DON’T recommend biofeedback.  My friend tried it for his cat allergies and saw no improvements either.

I also wouldn’t recommend homeopathic treatments.  They seem like quackery as well.

Cocoa Camino

I never really had a favorite brand of chocolate growing up because all chocolate was my favorite (minus bitter and white….ok so milk chocolate was my only favorite) 😛  However now I have certainly settled on a chocolate I can’t get enough of.  The taste is wonderful…smooth and deep…rich and versatile…but what really gets me about this chocolate is the fact that it is full of morality.  Fair trade, organic and with many vegan options, Cocoa Camino has become the main brand for me.  

For vegan options there is cocoa powder; chocolate bars in many different flavours (including almond, cranberry, orange, mint); and chocolate chips.  Let’s hope they come out with a chocolate syrup *drools*.  Until then, just melt down your favorite bar or the chocolate chips and drizzle over anything!  

Manipulating the elements

 

 

In the early spring I decided I wanted to start a garden.  I had no idea what I was doing (I still don’t) and I wasn’t even into gardening all that much.  The most I had ever done was planting some flowers from a plastic box that my mother had bought from the garden center.    

Thinking back on it, I couldn’t even remember how far to dig the hole or how much soil to put on top.  Was I suppose to pack it down after?  Did this even apply to vegetables?  How far apart should they be?  How much water would they need and when?

So many questions.  But I went for it anyways and pulled out all the weeds and basically anything and everything that looked even remotely like a plant or root from a patch of soil in my backyard.  After this was accomplished, I tilled the soil (a fancy word for digging it up about 1-2 feet and mixing it all up), then I laid down a fine layer of compost and mixed that gently in.  After that was all done, I raked it to look pretty (I’m not sure this was even necessary) and then I bought my plants.  On the list:

 

4 cauliflower

1 zucchini

5 tomatoes (for my parents)

4 swiss chard

4 romaine

4 endive

Oregano

Lime Basil

Cilantro

Parsley

2 Stevia plants

4 Nasturtiums (edible flowers)

 

It is now the end of summer and my zucchinis are growing like crazy (too big for me to handle, with far too m any coming).  The swiss chard turned whitish and one of them died immediately.  The other one is struggling.  Two cauliflower remain, one that looks huge but hasn’t budded at all and one that started budded but looks sickly.  I’ve got cherry tomatoes popping up all over the place but the bigger ones aren’t coming very well.  The romaine and endive grew very tall with hardly any leaves (just enough for a two person salad).  The stevia is doing wonderful but took awhile.  The basil is big and beautiful and smells divine.  The oregano is so -so and the parsley took forever to grow large.  The nasturtiums have popped a couple flowers here and there then died within a day but over the last week they started to blossom.  Just enough for a salad.  

 

Here are some pictures of my garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I somehow grew a frog!  

 

 

And now for my Nasturtium Salad:

One small head of boston lettuce (cut roughly)

Half a bunch of baby spinach (chopped roughly)

5-6 Nasturtiums or as many as you have!

Cumin/lime vinaigrette (from Vive le Vegan) 

Dressing: 

1/4 cup lime juice

1 small clove garlic

2-3 tbsp pure maple syrup

2 tbsp honey altervative (like agava or molasses)

1/2 tsp dijon mustard

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp cumin (scant)

1/8 tsp cinnamon

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2-3 tbsp sunflower oil or hemp seed oil (or more olive oil)

 

With a hand blender, combine all the ingredients except the oils and puree.  Continue to blend and slowly drizzle in the oil.  Season to taste with salt and pepper if desired.

 

I swear I’m not affiliated with Dreena Burton but I just bought her book ‘vive le vegan’ and I definitely recommend it.  Her recipes are short, simple and leave out a lot of processed/refined stuff.  

 

Blueberry muffins

Finally after 6 months of attempting a gluten-free, vegan muffin, I have concocted the tastiest, moistest muffin a girl could ask for!  After some very awful tasting mistakes, my persistence has paid off.  These muffins even remind me of oatmeal ones since I used some quinoa flakes which give it a slightly oatmeal-ish texture.

 

Avocado Soup with grilled asparagus and tortilla chips

Avocados and tomatoes seem to be a match made in heaven.  At least that’s what every avocado recipe out there tells me.  Since I ain’t diggin the deadly nightshades (sadly including chili powder which is avocados closest friend), I created a recipe that excludes these and lets the avocado shine on it’s own.

And how did this little number turn out?  Well my father detests avocados.  Even when made into a flavourful guacamole.  After many attempts to include them into his diet by sneaking them into dips, salads and on top of dishes as a garnish I was very curious to see how he would find my soup.  At first I was sad to see at the end of the meal he still had a full bowl.  When I asked him how he liked the soup he replied, “I’m working on my second bowl!  This is really good!”

So there you have it.  But don’t take my word for it, try it yourself because avocados are not a food you want to ignore!

 

Avocado Soup

 

Ingredients:

5-6 small to medium avocados (very ripe)

1 Tbsp olive oil (or veg. oil)

2 small onions (finely diced)

2 tsp minced garlic (about 4 cloves)

2 cups of vegetable broth

1 cup soy milk (or any milk you want to use)

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp salt

2 heaping tsps cumin

pepper to taste

 

Garnish:  

Vegan sour cream

tortilla chips

 

Directions: 

Slice and mash the avocados very well.  (you can also puree them in a food processor).  Set aside.  

Heat the oil in a medium sized pot and dice your onions.  Fry the onions and garlic till soft and browned.  

Add in the vegetable broth, the avocados, and the “milk” and stir well (keeping all this on medium heat).

Add in the remaining ingredients.

As soon as it’s hot it’s ready to serve.  Add some tortilla chips and maybe a dollop of vegan sour cream! 

I ate mine with some grilled asparagus.  Not exactly a complete meal but I had already eaten quite a bit of protein throughout the day.

Tasty treats?

 

I never liked marshmallows but I certainly do miss rice krispie squares.  Just like the commercials, I remember mixing up many batches of those tasty squares with my mother and my older brother.  I have such fond memories of sitting and staring through the microwave door watching the butter/marshmallow mixture melt down in yummy gooey goodness.  But those days are over and all I can think about is my disgust towards gelatin and how incredibly painful the effects of preservatives and sugar are on my body. Perhaps that is why I have so many health problems now. *sigh*.  

So you can imagine my surprise and absolute joy when I was leaving Bulk Barn with my bag of cornmeal and found these by the cash….

 

 

 

These rice krispie squares are vegan and gluten free!  I couldn’t wait to come home and devour these even though I knew it could mean a potential headache (there is some cane sugar in the ingredient list).  

After devouring a couple without hardly any attention paid, I slowed down and really absorbed the flavour.

If you are looking for rice krispie squares, these are definitely not spot on, however, they come close.  They are very, very sweet (and this is coming from someone with a  major sweet tooth), and they have this delightful nutty flavour that kicks in halfway through.  They are also nice and crisp so you won’t miss that aspect of the old fashioned squares.  My only complaint would have to be the price ($5.49 CAN per box which contains 8 squares) and the lack of “buttery-ness”.  For that perfect rice krispie square I suggest making your own vegan marshmallows and from there, making your own squares, however this certainly is a quick and sweet treat!