Soup and Snax

I cooked for 6 hours on Sunday and I don’t have much to show for it. I made my weekly pot of beans, then I made a test recipe for the upcoming Austin Food Bloggers potluck which I don’t want to share yet (it's good!), and then I made some requested nonvegan birthday scones for a friend, which he loved.

It was a cold and rainy weekend, so a big pot of soup for dinner was in order. I made another recipe from Love Soup and took to my mom’s, hoping Chase would join us as well. Naturally he got called in to work, but in these hard times we are all thankful to have jobs and don’t complain. Anyway, I decided on White Bean, Garlic, and Greens Soup.

I used spinach for my greens. The soup was very good, nicely seasoned with sage (an herb I don't use often enough) and garlic, and perfect topped with some seasoned croutons.

Now for the snacks! I love really really crunchy snacks. First the store bought variety.

These Go Raw Snax are very tasty and are nice to have with my salads for lunch. I usually have rice cakes, but these, as you can imagine, have way more flavor.

Best raw crackers I’ve found so far.

I like to have a bedtime snack. I can’t seem to manage more than six hours of sleep a night, so I need quality sleep. I’ve always heard that carbs before bed help you sleep better. This would explain my lifelong habit of having a bowl of cereal about an hour before bedtime. I usually chop up a whole apple, sprinkle on tons of cinnamon, then top with a little cereal and vanilla almond milk. My new favorite cereal is Yogi Crisps.

I imagine this is similar to the new granola clusters cereals I’ve seen. Yogi Crisps are delicious, wheat free, low calorie, and have a way cooler shape than clusters.

I buy cinnamon raisin flavor. There are no raisins in the package and for a while I thought they forgot to add them in. Then I read the ingredient list and saw that the raisins are pureed and added to the crisps – nice! This is a great cereal, even eaten straight out of the bag.

I did make myself one homemade treat. It’s another yummy Dreena recipe - Easy Pleasin’ Oat Bars. Of course I added in chocolate chips and cacao nibs.

These bars are easy to mix up, spread in the pan, and bake in just about 15 minutes.

I’ve been loving all of your MoFo posts. It’s hard to keep up but I’m doing my best!

The Demy – a Fun New Kitchen Toy

Awhile back I had the opportunity to test drive blogger friend Sophie’s great new gadget, the Demy. It’s a digital recipe reader that lets you sync up your personal recipe collection into a touch screen device that you set right on your kitchen counter. Here’s a few pictures I snapped showing some of its features.

When I had the Demy on, all the pictures I took gave it a brown frame, so here it is off. You can see it is shiny white. And by the way, it is kitchen safe and cleans up easily.



It is small.

It comes with many recipes already loaded into it, a few of mine included. After scrolling through the index, I pulled up my recipe for Peach Buckle.

Here are some screen shots showing my recipe. I remember this is super delicious, so if you have fresh peaches to use up, I can recommend this yummy treat!

This shot shows the features available, easily accessible at the bottom of the screen.

There’s a handy converter.

And a handy timer.

Be sure to check out all it can do at mydemy.com.

I’m sorry I don’t have a Sweet Freedom treat or any food pictures to show you. It’s been a long hard week at the office and record breaking heat every day and I’m whipped. I’ve done nothing but assemble salads and make frozen veggie stirfrys with Amy’s soup sauce, which is tasty and healthy enough, but certainly not blog worthy. I will, however, be making birthday party dessert today and will be back with party pics soon!

Raw Food Fun

I have more food in my house than I know what to do with. I got my staples from the neighborhood grocer, went to the farmers market, got a few things at Whole Foods, and also got my first CSA box of the season.




My box was full of arugula, beets, carrots, dill, garlic, garlic scapes, onions, radish, Swiss chard. I also got a huge head of lettuce.

And beautiful strawberries!

From the farmers market I got…

… broccoli, purple kohlrabi, spring onion, sunflower sprouts, and amaranth greens. Have you tried amaranth greens?

They are not very tender, but I like the flavor. I would liken it to a mild arugula. They are wonderful in salad. The vendor also told me they should be enjoyed juiced.

Now, about those beets. Beets are just not something I enjoy, unless I don’t know I’m eating beets, like when they’re pickled. I don’t like them boiled or roasted, so I decided to try them raw!

This beautiful dip is made from about a cup of nuts (almonds, cashews, and pine nuts) and equal parts of beets, red pepper, carrots, daikon, and cauliflower. It’s seasoned with garlic, soy sauce, black pepper, and dill. I really like the flavor combination of beets with daikon. In fact, I don’t think I would like this dip without the daikon. And now I’ve got an idea for a recipe to use up some more of those beets with the radishes!

Since I had the food processor and the cauliflower out and was getting into the raw thing, I made up a batch of raw rice.

This is Sesame Raisin Cauliflower Rice, flavored with tahini and a good amount of cilantro. It’s different, but good. This recipe and the beet dip are available from the March edition of Vegan Culinary Experience, which if you don’t already subscribe to, you should. There are LOADS of fabulous recipes, tips, and information and it’s free. Also from this edition is the Eggplant Bacon, which I’ve seen on a few blogs and which I have marinating now. Eggplant is another veggie foe I have to disguise its taste to enjoy. I’ll report back later on how it turns out.

Finally, let me tell you about a couple of raw treats I’ve enjoyed. Gopal’s is a local company started by someone who came from the Bliss Bar company. I’ve never had a Bliss Bar, but supposedly it’s good stuff. Gopal’s has a wonderful website with TONS of organic raw bars, cookies, cheese, wraps, and brownies. I recently tried a sweet and a savory one. Until I tried these, I never liked any raw bars. They just taste too raw. This sweet treat was crispy and very flavorful, and I wish I had bought some other varieties to try.

This savory treat was a “store favorite.” It looked interesting.

There are two wraps in a package that look like this:

It was very unique and very good. It was almost like jerky.

It is simply flavored nuts wrapped in nori, and I don’t see why you couldn’t come up with your own recipe for this, if you want some raw jerky. By the way, the website says “gopal” means “friend of the cow.” Awwwww….

I know Chase has to work late and can’t come to dinner tonight, but I’m cooking anyway. I may invite someone else for dinner, or just have Chase over for leftovers later in the week. Stay tuned for a Southern Supper.

I Have Converted!

I am now a green smoothie lover! Yep, I’ve been mixing them up for dessert this whole week. I start with a bunch of spinach or kale and then add in a chopped apple and a bit of whatever fresh or frozen fruits I have on hand.



I wish I had jumped on the smoothie bandwagon while VitaMix was being so generous with their blender giveaways. As you can see, my KitchenAid doesn’t make for very smooth smoothies. Oh, well, a chunky blend doesn’t seem so much like drinking my calories. Although it sure would be nice to blend up some silky smooth soups and grind my own flour.....

I’ve been grocery shopping, so I thought I would show you some of my purchases.

I got this huge local cauliflower at Whole Foods last week for $2. It’s sitting on a 10-inch dinner plate, which you can’t see. I got several good servings out of this thing!

These are locally made tortillas I also got from Whole Foods. They are fabulous and vegan. I only had a bite because they're made from flour and therefore not gluten free. My mom and son got to enjoy them.

These are my new favorite chips. If you want gluten free vegan crispy chips, I recommend them highly. Plus it’s fun to say Mr. Krispers.

Here’s the nutritionals if you’re interested.

I headed off to Whole Foods this morning, then turned around and headed to my awesome Asian supermarket. I hadn’t been there in a while and I’m glad I went because it’s always so fun to see what’s new and/or on special. Here’s what I got.

One thing I wanted to shop for was dried mushrooms – until I found these fresh ones. The shitakes were $2.30 and the enokis were $1.29. The daikon was 80 cents, snow peas $1.21, pears $1.49, kohlrabi $1.96, and peanut meal $1.59. The veggie bouillon is expensive but it’s the best in the world and I was completely out. I will be feasting on mushrooms tonight!

I got Chase some faux meat – pepper steak and chicken patties.

And I found some fruit chips! Katie blogged about fruit chips earlier this week and I was intrigued. These are not so healthy like the ones Katie got, but I bought them for Chase (he needs some fat).

The chips are obviously deep fried because they are very crispy. They are made from jackfruit, taro, pineapple, sweet potato, and banana. The jackfruit is really really good.

Now I’m off to make some seitan for Chase. I’ll probably deliver his Sunday dinner to him tomorrow. I’m not sure what I’ll make yet. I’m thinking about shredded barbecue seitan, but Bianca’s Un-chicken ’n’ Dumplins looked awfully good…..