Did you know some of your favorite herbs and spices contain as many antioxidants as a serving of fruits or veggies? (I realize this is a departure from my usual post, but if you read through the lesson, there’s cake at the end!) This is not an in-depth lesson. You can google any of these and discover their health promoting qualities. This is just a post to say you should try to incorporate these herbs and spices into your daily diet, and a few suggestions to help you do so. And maybe by doing so, you’ll cut down on your salt intake if that is an issue for you., plus you’ll be doing your body good.
Generally speaking, a half teaspoon of these dried spices and herbs provides the same or more antioxidants than a half cup of fresh fruit. Hence, they are Super Spices.
Cinnamon is among the highest in antioxidants. Of course we all add cinnamon to our muffin and cookie batters. TRY adding a half teaspoon cinnamon to coffee or tea before brewing. Sprinkle ½ teaspoon over peanut butter and banana sandwiches. When you bring home that pint of Soy Delicious Vanilla, let if soften, then stir in a teaspoon of cinnamon and refreeze. There’s nothing better on a hot summer evening than cinnamon ice cream over fresh fruit.
Ginger – I love my fresh ginger, but I do keep ground ginger as well. It’s not just for holiday baking. TRY sprinkling ground ginger over fresh fruit or adding a half teaspoon to a quart of lemonade.
Turmeric – DID YOU KNOW turmeric is a root and is in the ginger family? It has long been used as an anti-inflammatory to aid in treating conditions such as IBS and arthritis. We all use turmeric to make yellow rice and dals. TRY adding a half teaspoon to your next batch of hummus, or to a bag of popcorn to give it a buttery look, or to your next tofu scramble if you want an eggy look.
Pepper – this includes paprika, chili powder, red pepper, and cayenne. DID YOU KNOW the hotter the pepper, the more antioxidants it contains? TRY sprinkling some crushed red pepper flakes into your next batch of pizza or pasta sauce. Add it to store bought sauces or relishes for a real flavor boost.
Rosemary – Rosemary may be abundant in Mediterranean cooking, but it’s abundant in Texas too. The bushes grow roof high here! DID YOU KNOW rosemary is great for your hair and scalp? We are used to adding rosemary to focaccia and roasted potatoes. TRY adding a half teaspoon to your recipes for greens and dried beans, especially fava beans.
Oregano – This wonderful herb has one of the highest antioxidant levels of all the dried herbs, up to 20 times more than all others studied. Fortunately for us, oregano can be used as a flavor enhancer for practically any vegetable or legume. DID YOU KNOW there are 3 varieties of oregano - Italian, Greek, and Mexican? Mexican oregano is my favorite and I buy the dried whole oregano flowers. It’s the secret ingredient in my delicious and healthy ranch dressing and also in my favorite pinto beans. TRY adding fresh tomato slices and dried oregano to your grilled cheese sammies. Sprinkle it over those frozen pizzas when they come out of the oven for a more homemade flavor.
Thyme – This is another herb that goes with most veggies, as well as mushrooms and grains. It is a key component in the classic mire poix. Thyme lends an especially hearty flavor to bean soups, mixed vegetable soups, corn (think cornbread, cornbread stuffing), and tomatoes. DID YOU KNOW there are approximately 60 varieties of thyme? TRY a lemon juice, thyme, and white wine sauce on your artichokes. Sprinkle it on your tofu scrambles and into your tofu salads. And always season your homemade vegetable broths with thyme.
REMEMBER to crush your dried herbs before adding them to your food to release their full flavor. If you need just a pinch, simply rub the herbs with your thumb and forefinger as you sprinkle them onto the food. For more, pour it into the palm of one hand and rub your palms together to sprinkle it over your pan.
Thanks for sitting through your lesson! Now you may have cake, as promised. This is a picture of a slice of my mom’s lemon cake I made her for Mother’s Day. She LOVED everything about the cake – the flavor, the moistness, the bit of a crust it made on the outside, and the cute little personal size. 
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Super Spices
Saturday, May 10, 2008
A Cake for Mom
I have the best mom in the world. Really. Although she didn’t need to ask, she asked me to bake her something lemony for Mother’s Day. She loves lemon cake. She’s also leaving town Tuesday. So what is the perfect Mother’s Day treat for her? Lemony French Cake, courtesy of that fantastic baker (and lovely person), Celine of Have Cake Will Travel.
The cake is personal sized, baked in a six inch pan. It’s completely lemony, and loads of folks have made it and raved. I haven’t cut into it or tasted it, but I’m not worried because any recipe of Celine’s is a winner.
Red Cabbage-Asparagus Salad with Tahini Dressing from Allrecipes. It’s interesting. I love all the components; I'm just not sure I like them together. I did leave out the pinenuts. Perhaps including them would make me like the salad more.
Broccoli Carrot Chickpea Salad. Just lightly steamed broccoli, shredded carrots from a bag, and a can of chickpeas to which I added lemon juice and garlic I ate all the broccoli and carrots out of it. Guess I wasn’t in a chickpea mood – weird…
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Top Ten Dinner
I hope you have seen the post by Erik Marcus at Vegan.com for his Top Ten Recipes of 2008. For our Sunday dinner I prepared 4½ of them. It goes without saying that they are all incredibly delicious, so I will let the pictures speak for themselves.
Nearly Instant Thai Coconut Corn Soup
Nava Atlas – Vegan Express
Chickpea Curry
Hema Parekh – The Asian Vegan Kitchen
Indonesian Coconut Rice
Robin Robertson – Vegan Fire & Spice
Plated with mixed steamed veggies with Balsamic Maple Sauce
Dreena Burton – Eat Drink & Be Vegan
Banana Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding
Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero – Veganomicon
The soup is dreamy, creamy, and corny.
The chickpeas are spicy and amazing. (Amanda, you will LOVE these!)
The coconut rice is easy to make and delicious. Dreena’s sauce over the veggies was the perfect sweet complement to our spicy dishes.
The bread pudding is also super easy to make and so tasty. I served it with a peanut sauce.
Please visit Vegan.com for all Top Ten recipes and get cookin’!
Monday, April 28, 2008
A Saucy Sunday Supper (and recipes!)
I love minimally prepared foods. I love the sweetness of homemade beans, broccoli with a splash of lemon and a dash of garlic, lightly seasoned grilled or roasted veggies, and of course, fresh fruits. My son, however, has always been a believer in “the sauce makes the meal.” I think sauce mainly adds unnecessary calories, but occasionally, including a good sauce (or 3 or 4) can be quite a nice enhancement for any dish. So for this meal, and especially for Chase, all food is saucy!
First, you must have toast for all the sauce! (Is this the first picture of plain ol’ toast on a blog?)
Baked Tofu with Pineapple Chipotle Sauce
I sliced a pound of thawed frozen tofu into 4 steaks. After draining I marinated them in the sauce overnight.
adapted from “The Complete Vegan Kitchen”
Saute half a medium onion and 1 clove minced garlic in 2 teaspoons canola oil. When soft, add in:
1 cup pineapple juice
juice of a lime
¼ cup cider vinegar
1 T. sugar
dash S&P
Bring to a boil, then add in:
1 chopped chipotle pepper
2 t. chipotle paste
slurry of 1 t. arrowroot in 1 T. water
Cook and stir until thickened. Add in ¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro if desired.
Pour into a baking dish, add the tofu and marinate. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes, turning halfway through baking time.
This sauce is fabulous! I could eat it by the spoonfuls. Sweet and spicy is always so nice. I couldn’t decide which picture I liked best.
Lentils in Onion Gravy
Since I don’t do tofu, I made myself some tasty lentils. This is from Vegan Fire & Spice, although I did not use Indian spices, and I added in a small bag of fresh spinach. This was also very, very good.
New Potato Salad in Creamy Dill & Green Onion Sauce
I served this as a cold salad. I boiled a pound of quartered new potatoes for about 9 minutes. When they were done and still slightly warm, I stirred in the sauce.
Creamy Dill & Green Onion Sauce
3 T. cream cheese, warmed
2 T. milk
2 chopped green onions, white and green parts
1 T. chopped fresh dill
S&P to taste
We have always preferred a mustard type potato salad and are not big fans of cream cheese, so this version seemed rather decadent and we had trouble eating more than a couple of bites. Potatoes with green onions and fresh dill sprinkled on top would have been just fine for us. But for those who are cream cheese fans, this is a perfect sauce and would win over any omni.
Steamed Veggies Mornay
Okay, “Mornay” is probably a stretch. But I did start with a roux. I adapted a recipe from “The Complete Vegan Kitchen,” which, if you haven’t noticed by now, is a cookbook I have come to love. This sauce is soooo good. I always thought folks who covered their veggies with cheese didn’t really like veggies, but Chase and I both really really loved this sauce. Really really.
Vegan Mornay Sauce
2 T. nutritional yeast
4 T. chickpea flour
1 cup warm almond milk
2 T. ground raw cashews
½ t. garlic powder
½ t. salt
½ t. black pepper
½ t. paprika
2 T. Earth Balance
1 t. Dijon mustard
Put the yeast and flour in a small sauce pan and toast lightly over low heat. Slowly whisk in the milk to form a smooth mixture. Whisk in the cashews and spices, then the EB and mustard.
Makes 1 cup
We put our veggies on toast, then topped with sauce.
My lovely plate:
Chase’s beautiful plate:
Mango Cream Pie with Toasted Coconut Topping and Strawberry Sauce
I have more mangoes than I can eat, so I thought I should put them in a dessert. Again turning to “The Complete Vegan Kitchen,” I found a recipe for Mango Cream Pie, so I used the mango cream portion (which is basically 3 pureed mangoes, a box of silken tofu, and sugar) for my pie. Since this pie is for Chase (again, no tofu for me) and he loves graham cracker crusts, it’s hard not to buy a premade “to go” crust, so that’s what the mango cream is in. It was actually not quite sturdy enough for the filling.
The strawberry sauce is your basic fresh strawberries cooked with sugar and water, then thickened with an arrowroot slurry. It’s such a beautiful color.
Mangoes and strawberries are one of our favorite flavor combinations and this pie with the sauce was perfectly delicious. Strawberry pie with mango sauce may have to be the next dessert I make!
I’ve been away from the computer all weekend and it’s late now. Tomorrow evening I see my trainer, so after my workout I will be ready to come home and just sit at my desk and visit as many of your blogs as I can.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
HAPPY EARTH DAY!!!
On Saturday my mom, sister, and I went to a farmers market in a park next to the Earth Day Fair. This was my mom’s and my first trip to the market without my dad, so it was sort of bittersweet. It was an all day event, but we started early at the market, then made our way through the fair. Here are a few pictures of the highlights.
As you can see, it was a beautiful day for an Earth Day Fair. (My mom and sister are on the right.) There were many booths with energy saving guides and gadgets, and many repurposed items, e.g., feed bags made into shopping bags and XXL men’s shirts made into women’s shirts. ("Repurposed" is my new favorite word. I'm a word nerd like Chocolate Covered Vegan.)
I don’t know why the bike with wings was there, but it was just lovely!
This was the solar powered stage for the live music.
This was my favorite thing at the fair.
A giant solar powered oven!
It’s called "The Villager" because it can feed a village in an hour.
Click on the picture so you can read the sign to see what this baby can do.
I bought myself a looseleaf tea maker and some wonderful locally made Zhi Tea.
Sample teas too. If you're a tea lover, you really should take a look at the Zhi Tea website to see all the wonderful flavors they offer.
I also got tons of sample Clif bars, including flavors I have never before encountered, including Cool Mint Chocolate. I brought home broccoli and sunflower sprouts from the market and my mom took home onions, tomatoes, and lots of salad greens. I also bought a locally made Lemon Currant Granola for my mom and me to share. I had never tasted nor ever even seen Lemon Granola and it was delicious! As I was eating some chopped apples sprinkled with the delicious granola, I grabbed the bag to check the ingredients because I was thinking I need to make up a batch of this stuff myself. Rolled oats, zante currants, lemon extract, butter…..
Who puts butter in granola!!?!!??
In honor of Earth Day today, I made myself a Green Tea Smoothie after a grueling session with my trainer.
Green Tea Smoothie
serves 2
¼ cup green tea, cooled (I used a wonderful Acai Green Tea)
1 cup fresh strawberries
½ medium banana
1 T. agave nectar
lots of ice cubes
Blend all together until smooth and enjoy!
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Black Foods
I’ve been plagued by seasonal allergies lately. The weather has been beautiful and I’m trying to enjoy spending time with my family while my sister is here visiting. We’re keeping my mom company and helping her take care of things around the house. I was in charge of salads for the three of us on Saturday night, and as I was loading the food into the car to take over, I thought to myself, This is how you can tell I don’t feel good. All my food is black!
I was asked to bring my Black Bean Salad which everyone loves and I’ve made a hundred times, but here’s another look. This one has black beans, yellow corn, orange bell pepper, purple onion, tomatoes, and cilantro. It’s much better with an avocado too, but we had eaten all we had on hand so it didn’t make it into this salad.
The second salad was Black Rice and Chickpea Salad. This salad also has green onions, sunflower seeds, and chopped dried apricots and is seasoned with a mustard vinaigrette and some cumin. This was really tasty.
I brought sweet treats too! In keeping with my black mood, I made Double Chocolate Mini Muffins. These are a test recipe for Happy Herbivore, so I’ll just let you look.
… and super fabulous Apple Oat Muffins. I think they were even more delicious the second day!
One more treat – Celine’s Oreo Cookie Cookies. Mmmmmmmmmm! A HUGE hit! I heart all of Celine’s recipes. I especially heart this one because she adapted it from Anna.
I have one more day to spend with my mom and sister, then my sister goes home early Tuesday morning. Thanks for coming, Sister. It’s been great having you here and especially great for our Mom!
I’ll be back later in the week with a few pictures from our Saturday farmers market/Earth Day Celebration!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Three Cookies
I baked three batches of cookies recently. All were delicious. One was easy to prepare, and the other two required a bit more skill, time, and patience.
Cookie No. 1 - the easiest and probably my favorite.
No Bake Peanut Butter & Popcorn Crispies
In a medium heavy saucepan over low heat combine:
½ cup creamy peanut butter
½ cup brown rice syrup
2 cups cornflakes
1 cup popped popcorn
1 cup toasted shredded coconut
Bring just to a boil, stirring constantly until combined, then add in the cornflakes, popcorn, and coconut. Turn heat to very low. Drop big spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and let cool. (You really couldn’t taste the coconut in these cookies. I think you could sub in cornflake or popcorn crumbs instead and save your coconut for another treat.)
These were so peanutty delicious with a fun popcorn flavor and crispy flakes for a great texture contrast.
Cookie No. 2 – medium difficulty, and my new favorite non-chocolate cookie.
Citrus Ribbon Cookies
The only veganizing needed for this recipe is to replace the egg. You should only us Ener-G egg replacer. Anything else will interfere with the delicate flavor of the citrus. As you can see from my picture, I used a flax egg and that was wrong wrong wrong.
A bit of skill is required to evenly divide your dough into equal thirds, flavor and tint it, and then pat it into even layers in a loaf pan. Your cookies will turn out prettier and be much easier to mold if you wait to make these until your son returns your clear glass loaf pan instead of prepping them “blind” in a metal bread pan as I had to do; hence, the rather uneven layers.
Oh, well, I still couldn’t wait to bake these. Here’s how they looked after slicing and ready to go into the oven.
Even though the flax flavor was strong, once I got past that (which I really didn’t mind) the citrus flavors, layer by layer, came through very nicely. These cookies would be perfect for bridal or baby showers, Mother’s Day, or any sort of spring fling party. Oh, the cookie at the front of the plate was made with leftover dough all mushed together. You could just make all tie-dye cookies!
Cookie No. 3 – so time consuming and so messy I vowed never to make them again. Until I tasted them.
MSV Turtle Shortbread Wedges
I guess I actually made Goober Shortbread Wedges because I used peanuts instead of pecans (I’m not a fan). These cookies are insanely delicious. My whole family went crazy for them. I have dreamed of making a vegan Snickers, my favorite candy bar that I can’t remember the last time I tasted. These cookies are probably as close as I could ever hope to get. You definitely should make these, but there are a few points to consider.
1. It took much longer to make these than the recipe seems to indicate. The candy topping takes 30 minutes or more to reach 300 degrees; the recipe says 5 – 7 minutes, then until done. I hardly ever make candy so I wasn’t expecting it to take so long.
2. The recipe states that when the cookie is finally done, you should wait 20 minutes before cutting into wedges. When I took these pictures it was nearly midnight and I had waited an hour, so I had to go ahead and cut. But you can see it’s still not completely set.
3. It will take you a good half hour to clean up. Hot candy cools and solidifies on anything it touches and is extremely difficult to remove. You will have to clean up rock-hard glued-on clumps of sticky sugar from the stovetop, spoon rest, pot you cooked in, sink, countertop, floor, and anywhere else it may have dripped. (I’m still finding spots on the floor!)
4. My biggest issue when I read through the recipe was which type of baking pan to use. The recipe said to use an 8-inch round cake pan. I couldn’t imagine turning out or sliding out delicate shortbread with a soft topping. I decided to use a disposable 8-1/2 inch pan I had on hand. To remove the cookie, I cut the sides of the pan and folded them out flat, then carefully slid the whole cookie out. A cheesecake pan would work even better, as my pan was so full with the liquidy candy topping I was nervous moving it in and out of the oven.
But like I said, it’s definitely worth the time and mess to make these goodies at least once!
