So, now that I’m over my cold, I’m once again back on the health food train.   As you may remember, I recently made some wheat-free low-sugar chocolate chunk cookies, which with the help of Heather Eats Almond Butter, I’m now calling, ChocoChunk Oaties.  ChocOaties?  ChocoChunkies?  Ok the jury is still out on that one.

Anyway, I wondered what would happen if I made a peanut butter version, and the result was wonderful.

Peanut Butter Oaties!

I’m calling these Peanut Butter Oaties.  The texture was a million times better than the originals and even better than the banana ones!   They held together.  They were chewy.  And they’re peanut butter… Need I say more?

I even made some with the unsweetened chocolate chunks.

Choco Peanut Butter Oaties

So the flavors were pretty good, but what I really wanted was a huge kick of straight up, non-diluted peanut butter flavor.

Problem solved:

Oh Em Gee.. mmm peanut buttery

Topped with a smear of peanut butter, it was hard to imagine how these could get much better.    Hard to imagine, but not impossible.

Chocolate Chickpea Spread

I took the chunk-less peanut butter versions, and smeared some of my chocolate chickpea spread on them.   Mmmm.  So good.

Only one way to make it better.

COOKIE SANDWICH

Organic peanut butter and chocolate chickpea spread, nestled between  two wheat free, low-sugar peanut butter cookies….  It was perfection.   Is there anything better than a cookie sandwich?  Cookiewich!

Peanut Butter Oaties

• 1 3/4 cups oat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt*
• 1 tablespoon molasses
• 1 tablespoon agave
• 1 tablespoon granulated stevia
• 1/3 cup peanut butter
• 1 Tablespoon flax meal
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• (Optional) 2 oz unsweetened baking chocolate

*Depending on whether or not you’re using salted peanut butter, you may way to adjust the salt.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375˚F
2. Cream molasses, agave, stevia, peanut butter, flax, water, and vanilla together.
3. Mix together flour, baking soda, and salt.
4. Combine flour mixture and peanut butter mixture.
5. Chop unsweetened chocolate into small chunks.  Add to mixing bowl.
6. Drop batter onto ungreased baking sheet.  Push down to flatten the cookies with fork to make criss-cross design.
7. Bake 10-12 minutes.

You know you want to come.

Artwork by Yoga With Amey

So I’ve had a pretty bad cold for the past few days.   I’ve spent most of my days sleeping, blowing my nose, and drinking tea.  *sigh*  Boring!   And since I gave up TV for lent, and my brain did not feel particularly up to processing the French language (the only unread novels I have in the apartment are French), I wasn’t left with much to do.

Also, to make matter worse, when I’m sick I crave junk food.  Like mad.  Actually it’s not all junk… it’s just all carb-centric.  First I’ll crave spaghetti, then pancakes, then cookies, then peanut butter chocolate fudge, and then the next thing you know I’m elbow deep in donuts!

I’m not sure exactly how the craving came upon me… I was cruising the food blogs, staring at heavenly foods, sinful foods, purgatory foods, and all foods in between, when suddenly I wanted to make donuts.

Eep! Donuts!

I don’t know what happened!   One moment I was lying on my bed/couch, and the next moment I had my hands full of two different kinds of dough, 4 different toppings, 2 different fillings, and a pan of hot hot oil.

Powdered donuts:

Powdered donuts

Glazed donuts:

Glaaaaaaaze

Cinnamon sugar donuts:

Mmm cinnamon.

Jelly and Chocolate filled donuts:

Umm, I keep trying to take bites of my computer screen...

They were fricken incredible.  I made potato donuts– which may sound weird but are so so so so so good.   My mom used to make them when I was a kid…  and fortuitously, there was a box of instant mashed potatoes in the cupboard that was just dying to become donuts.  Ah, fortune was truly smiling upon me!

I recently learned that potato donuts are actually called “Spudnuts”!  How cute is that?  They’re seriously the best cake donut ever.  I mean, the problem with most cake donuts is that they always seem to be kind of dry or weird inside.  Just, not nearly as exciting as a yeast donut.  But the mashed potatoes in the batter create an amazing, moist center.  And they’re fast!   Because sometimes, you don’t want to wait a million years for your dough to rise.  Sometimes you want donuts NOW.   Spudnuts to the rescue!

Inside a potato donut:

SOOO GOOD

I made sooo many donuts.  And there was NO ONE to eat them!   I was all home alone, my friends were all MIA, and my sister was off galavanting about Berkeley or Marin or something.   I did my best to put a dent in the donut mountain, but I’m only one little girl and I couldn’t handle two dozen sugarry fried pillows of wonderful all by myself.

I was so sad!  I temporarily lost all hope in humanity.   What kind of world is this if I make two dozen AMAZING fresh donuts, and no one comes by to eat them?  And those donuts needed to be eaten right then and there!   In my opinion, donuts are not very good unless eaten immediately.   I was not going to let my friends eat my day old donuts and go “Ho hum.  They were OK for a vegan donut.”

No sirree!  I had a reputation to protect!  Two reputations!  My own reputation as a baker, pastry chef, and creator of all things delightful, and the reputation of veganism at large.  ’Cause, I’m sure you’ve heard it.  ”Oh, I don’t like vegan cookies.  I had one once and it was kind of weird.”    asdfasldkjfa;dlkgj!!!  Rawr!   That sort of thing always gets me all twisted up and huffy puffy and threatening to bake cookies to PROVE THEM WRONG.   I’m sorry if the one cookie you had once was not a good cookie.  But, I promise you, there are lots of amazing, delicious, incredible vegan treats out in the world.  You just have to find someone who can make them well.

Anyway, I had the most massive amount of day old donuts in the morning.   And not much of an idea of what to do with them.   GAH!

Eep! DAY OLD DONUTS.

I couldn’t eat them all by myself… I couldn’t let my friends eat them… I had no desire to freeze and reheat them… what on Earth was I going to do?  I really didn’t want to throw them away… Oh, but I might have to!

Then, it dawned on me!  Duh!

Eureka!

Can you guess what’s happening here?

Donuts in a pan!

Donut bread pudding!  My faith in humanity was restored.  Surely the Universe had engineered the whole unfortunate Donut Debacle just to lead to this very breakthrough.  Donut Bread Pudding.  Donut Pudding?  Yes.  Donut Pudding.     I mean, donuts by themselves are delicious and awesome, obviously.  But donut pudding?  That’s a whole new world.

So I did what any girl would do.  I whipped up the wet custardy part of the pudding, poured it over the donuts, and threw it in the oven.  I called over a few boys and had them watch while I sliced up an apple, sauteed it in some non-hydrogenated buttery margarine, threw in a teaspoon of brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg… and then *glug glug glug* RUM!  Then, I lit it on fire.   I need a cooking show.  Or at least someone to take pictures of me while I do crazy things like light my apples on fire.  Woosh!  Flames!   They were so high!  And awesome.  And my guy friends were completely captivated and impressed.

And, to top the whole thing off?   Caramel Rum Sauce.   I don’t mess around folks.  If I’m going to make an unhealthy fatty sugarry bad-for-you dessert, I go all the way.

My Masterpiece

The non-vegan boys were so knocked out they couldn’t even speak while they ate.  They just kept laughing, shaking their heads in disbelief, taking deep breaths, and staring at me with wide eyes.  Epic Win.

Donut pudding, apples, and rum sauce. Dizamn!

I told them I had considered tossing the whole thing out, and boy #2 told me that would have been a crime against humanity.  Hehe!

I don’t necessarily recommend frying up two dozen donuts from scratch just to make the donut pudding, but if you happen to have a massive load of day old donuts on hand?  Go for it.

Recipes after the jump!

(more…)

My sister and I went to a pizza-making party last week.  It was a fun and genius idea on the part of our friend.   It was especially fun for me because I got to teach a whole bunch of people how to stretch and toss dough!  Rolling pins?  Pshaw!   Who needs rolling pins when you have hands?   There were little disks of dough flying through the air, threatening to land on a head or two, crashing into lumpy messes, falling lopsided into our hands… but in the end, everyone had some pretty great pizza.  And I made some heart-shaped breadsticks out of the same dough.  Because I’m cute like that.

Anyway, we came home with a mass of pizza toppings, which have just been sitting in the fridge since Sunday.   So last night, when I decided to make a stir fry to go with some incredible tomato-lentil soup, I peered into the fridge and a lightbulb went off!  Eureka!  So after changing the lightbulb  …  (Just kidding! The lightbulb was a metaphor. Don’t roll your eyes too much! They’ll get stuck that way.) … Anyway, how fantastic would pizza stir-fry be?

I decided to answer my own question.

Stir Fry!

Crispy tofu, fresh basil, farmers’ market tomatoes, black olives, button mushrooms, kale, tomato sauce, and a “cheesy” sauce.   Tastes like pizza but without the crust.  Win!  Maybe next time I’ll pile it on top of a whole wheat tortilla, sprinkle on some Daiya, and broil it for a few minutes.

I’m sure this is infinitely adaptable.  Just throw in whatever pizza toppings you like best.   I’d give you a recipe, but I bet you can figure it out.  I recommend using Post Punk Kitchen’s cast-iron stir-fry method.

Ok.  Here is a kind of recipe.

Pizza Stir-Fry

• Extra extra firm Tofu
• Olive Oil
• Spices
• Pizza Toppings
• Your favorite cheese sauce
• Tomato Sauce
• Whatever
• Healthy stuff?

Directions

1. Heat a cast-iron pan… or non-stick pan… or whatever pan you like.
2. Fry tofu until crispy in a small amount of olive oil and spices. Basil, oregano, the works.
3. Fry tomatoes, olives, mushrooms, kale until soft and tender
4. Mix together and cover with some tomato sauce and a bit of vegan cheese or cheese sauce.  The humnut sauce is simple and pretty good.
5. Eat it.  Yum.

Oh yeah, I always always cook my tofu with turmeric.  I don’t know why exactly.  I guess it’s because my mom always did it that way?  And so now tofu looks funny to me if it’s not that bright turmeric yellow…

I made a cookie jar!  Well… “made” isn’t quite the right word.  What I did was recycle an empty giant pretzel tub into a cookie jar.   A pretzel tub that looked something like this:

Pretzel Jar

And turned it into this!

Cupcake!

I won’t be putting any cupcakes in the “cookie jar,” but I thought it would be cute and get the point across.  The point being: here be awesome sweet things.

Om Nom Nom!

Yummy sweet things that make you say “Om nom nom!”

Yum!

And YUM!

Things like cookies!

Les Macarons?

One of these days I’ll make some vegan macarons… but I chose to paint them on the cookie jar just because I thought it would be super cute.  Was I right?

CUPCAKE

Yay cookie jar!  I’ve since covered it with sealer, so it’s all shiny now, too.  Shiny AND cute.  I’m pretty happy.

But, what’s a cookie jar without cookies?    Inspired by the unsweetened chocolate chunks in HEAB’s scookies, and Post Punk Kitchens Wheat-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies, I decided to make “healthy cookies” for my cookie jar.  I’m gonna blame my recent weird health craze on California living.  I used to scoff at healthy baked goods.  My philosophy was if you wanted some dessert, you should have a proper rich, decadent, fat-filled, sugarry ridiculous something-or-other, and just eat less of it if you wanted to be “healthy.”

But, lots of sugarry foods make me feel all weird and hungover the next day… Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not going to stop making ridiculous goodies all together… I’m just trying to work in the healthier options a bit as well.  So, I’m experimenting with agave and stevia and oat flour and the likes.

Anyway! I present to you,

Cookies!

Wheat-Free Low-Sugar Chocolate Chunk Cookies!   Hrm, that’s kind of a mouthful isn’t it?

inside a wheat-free cookie

They were honestly pretty damn good.  Oaty, nutty, chocolatey, with just a hint of sweet.  The chocolate chunks are unsweetened baking chocolate– dark and intense–and made palatable by the light cookie sweetness surrounding them.   Since the cookies are made entirely with oat flour, they did crumble a bit more readily than your average chocolate chip cookie.  So, in an attempt to improve the binding– and lower the fat content– I made another batch using mashed banana instead of oil.

Banana Cookie

They held together waaay better.  Also, the bananas added another couple hints of sweetness, and the result was a cookie that tasted reminiscent of chocolate chip banana bread.  Win.

Before you throw yourself into cookie making, here is a little note on “oat flour.”  You can probably buy crazy expensive oat flour at your local Whole Foods, or you can be like me and put your oats through a coffee grinder or food processor.  It’s as simple as that!   I used steel cut oats since it’s what we had on hand, but rolled oats would probably work better.

Wheat-Free Chocolate Chunk Cookies

• 1 3/4 cups oat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon molasses
• 1 tablespoon agave
• 1 tablespoon granulated stevia
• 1/3 cup canola oil  (or 1 cup mashed banana)
• 1 Tablespoon flax meal
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 oz unsweetened baking chocolate
• (Optional) 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• (Optional) 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375˚F
2. Mix together flour, baking soda, and salt.
3. Add molasses, agave, stevia, oil (or banana), flax, water, vanilla.  Mix together.
4. Chop unsweetened chocolate into small chunks.  Add to mixing bowl.
5. Drop batter onto ungreased baking sheet.  Push down to flatten the cookies if you want to.
6. Bake 10-12 minutes.

Easy Peasy.  God Bless Isa Chandra Moskowitz and her brilliant recipes.

Next time, I’m thinking of trying to make these with peanut butter.  Good idea or what?

I love going to the Farmers’ Market.  I love filling up on the delicious samples, eyeing the bright flowers, squeezing the assorted dirt caked produce, and I love using my Beatles tote bag.

Ready for some veggies!

The bag is probably enough to get me out of the house.

This is what I came home with in the end:

Daisies!

It’s always hard for me to pass up all the flowers at the market.  I generally think my money is better spent on something I can eat… but they were practically giving these away as a “rainy day special.”  I couldn’t pass them up.  They’re so sweet and innocent looking, don’t you think?

Ah, to be a bumblebee!

The full spread:

Yum yum!

I only had $12, so I couldn’t go too wild at the market.   Apples, oranges, strawberries, rainbow carrots, lettuce, and daisies!  I’m thinking of making lettuce wraps.

I did get these as a treat, though:

Bolani!

Sooooo good!   Bolani is a traditional Afghani flatbread, stuffed and baked with deliciousness.  It comes in a whole variety of flavors, such as pumpkin, potato, spinach, and lentil.    It’s all delicious eaten on its own, hot or cold. But, to push it into a whole different realm of awesome, they also carry a whole assortment of chutneys and hummuses and spreads… and it’s all vegan and low-fat!  Mmm.  Bolani.   And their guy at market will feed you every possible flavor combination imaginable… just one sample after another until you’re completely bolani’d out.  I love it.   Yesterday, he also threw in a piece of free baklava.

Baklava!

It’s clearly not vegan, but I didn’t want to turn down free baklava… so I gave it to my sister.  :)

I woke up this morning at 6 am on the dot.  My eyes just popped open and my brain started rushing to and fro.   I hadn’t planned on getting up until 7, so I wasn’t too happy about this situation.   Especially since my throat hurt like the dickens.   Blah.  My throat hurt and my ears had that we’re-next-to-the-throat-so-we-kind-of-hurt-too feeling.   I hate that feeling.   They don’t really hurt, but it’s as if they’re trying to sympathize with my throat or something.

I got up, drank three glasses of water, wrote some emails, and tried to convince my brain to go back to sleep.

I’ve felt kind of blah ever since.   To make matters worse, I was subjected to THREE phone interviews today.  Ugh!  Stress.

Luckily, the Mr T Experience is around to pull me out of my funk.  Dr. Frank can’t cure my impending cold, but his songs can at least make me smile in spite of it.

I found this article really interesting, and crazy obvious.

There are three basic types of oats. There are old-fashioned rolled oats, which are whole oats rolled flat. Then there are quick oats, which are rolled oats that have been ground up a little bit more to make them cook faster. Finally, there are the steel cut oats, where the whole raw oat was cut into smaller chunks.

They all start from the same grains, but they are cut differently. Rolled oats are steamed slightly to make them cook faster, but otherwise, they aren’t any different from steel cut oats.

The extra processing isn’t a big deal, because you have to remember this process called digestion where you break down food to absorb it. So these oats are all the same once they get past your mouth.

So you see, rolled oats and steel cut oats are the same food, just cut differently. Saying they’re vastly different in nutritional value is like saying a sandwich cut straight down the middle is healthier than a sandwich sliced diagonally into triangles!

I, too, have heard people say that steel cut oats are “better” for you.   However, the idea that they contain more fiber or protein than rolled oats is a little preposterous.  They’re the same grain, people!

I like steel cut oats because of the texture.  It’s very satisfying to be able to bite and chew your cereal.  Also, they hold up better to multiple bouts of reheating.  I tend to make one big pot of oats a week and just reheat little portions for breakfast.  This makes my breakfast faster and easier to prepare, and helps me make less noise in the morning.  :)

Another breakfast post?   Jeeeeeeeez!

I’m sorry, y’all.  Breakfast is my favorite meal.  You’ll just have to bear with me.   I mean, don’t get me wrong… I love lunch, dinner, snacks, and desserts as well.   I love eating in general.  But, breakfast food is just the best.  I could eat breakfast for every meal.  Sometimes I do.  Waffles for dinner?  Yes, please.

However, if you’re an early riser like I am, and you happen to have a late-riser, light-sleeper roommate, and you live in the teeniest tiniest of apartments, it can be a little difficult to whip up anything more complicated than toast or cereal in the morning.   My cooking and baking is always accompanied by a lot of clanking, banging, and whirring.   So what happens when you want something decadent and ridiculous?   Well, folks, then you’ve gotta be a little creative.

And I am creative.

Breakfast win!

So I approached this meal knowing only one thing: I want blueberries!   But we only have frozen blueberries… so they’ve gotta be cooked in some way.  It’s a little too cold and rainy this week to just go around eating frozen blueberries.  So I made a blueberry sauce.  The simplest blueberry sauce known to man.

Blueberry Sauce

• 1 cup frozen blueberries
• 1 teaspoon corn starch
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice

Quiet Directions:

1. Very quietly empty the remainder of a small bag of frozen blueberries into a saucepan.
2. Gently place it on the stove.  Shhh!  Gently!   Turn to stovetop to medium heat.
3. Sprinkle some cornstarch into the pan.  Don’t really bother with fishing out a teaspoon.  Rummaging through the drawer makes too much noise.
4. Toss a hefty splash of lemon juice into the pan.  Is it a teaspoon?  Who cares.  It really doesn’t matter.   The proportions for this sauce aren’t important.  Just toss the ingredients together, let them cook and bubble, stir occasionally, and wait for the blueberries to do their thing.   Eventually they’ll thicken and cook down and be amazing.
5. Sprinkle in sweetener if you want to… I usually don’t.  Blueberries are sweet enough.

So.  I had a sauce.  A sauce and nothing to put it on.  What good is that?    Bah.  Breakfast isn’t solved yet!   I wanted something fast and quiet.   So I opened up a cupboard and eyed the oats.  Oatmeal?  No.  Too normal.  This is a Sunday!   You know what sounds good?   Granola.  Instant Granola.  Damn, I’m smart.

Almost Instant Granola

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• Agave or Maple Syrup
• Pinch of salt
• Pinch of cinnamon

Quiet Directions:

1. Pull the oats out of the cupboard without knocking over all the other canisters.  I know, it’s hard!  They’re all lined up like dominoes.  One little “Whoops!” and down they go…
2. Pour a mound of oats onto a dry nonstick frying pan.  Does it look like it’s about a cup of oats?  Doesn’t matter.  The less dishes I use the less noise I make.  I’m not going to clank everything together just to fish out a measuring cup… especially since it really doesn’t matter with this recipe.  Add more oats if you want more “granola” … use less if you want less.
3. Drizzle on some vegetable oil and syrup, giving the oats a quick stir with your spoon.  Sprinkle on the cinnamon and salt.
4. Toast the oats in the pan for 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally.  They’ll become golden brown, and smell and taste exactly like granola.
5. BAM!  Instant Granola.

Note: I’ve also done this using packs of Quaker Instant Oatmeal.  It’s even easier because you get to skip the flavoring part.   Just empty the packet into the pan, spray with a little PAM, and let them toast.

So.  Now we’ve got granola and blueberry sauce.  You know what would go great with that?  Yogurt.  Or cheesecake.  Or yogurt cheesecake.  Mmm.   But you know what I didn’t have?  Yogurt.  Nor cheesecake.  Nor cheesecake flavored yogurt.  Nor yogurt based cheesecake.  Do you know what I did have?  Silken tofu.

Silken tofu is an incredibly versatile ingredient.  It has basically no taste and can be used in a gazillion different ways.  I stared longingly at the little vacuum packed box, wishing I could use my blender.  I wanted to blend it smooth, flavor it, and bake it into little vegan cheesecakes.  I could use the granola for the crust and the berries for the topping… oh it would be so good!

But the blender was completely and utterly out of the question.  Too much noise.  So I did the next best thing.  I grabbed a fork, and I mashed that tofu as if it were a potato that gave me the evil eye.  Annnnnd…  it looked like ricotta when I was done.  Lightbulb!

Lemon Vanilla “Ricotta”

• 1 package vacuum packed silken tofu
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon agave syrup

Quiet Directions:

1. Cut open package and squish into a bowl.  Mash with fork. Not too vigorously!  Remember, we’re being quiet here.
2. Mix in flavorings.
3. Taste and adjust.
4. Done.

Holy Mother of Oats!

I put the “ricotta” in the fridge to chill, because I wanted it to be cold.  I served with room temperature instant granola and warm blueberry syrup.

Breakfast success!  All without waking up my sister!  She was so surprised to find such a fancy breakfast waiting for her.    Two thumbs up for a quiet and yummy meal!

It’s officially strawberry season here in Northern California.   Have I mentioned how much I love California?  Have I mentioned how much I love strawberries?  Can you guess how much I love my local farmers’ market?

*Happy sigh*

ZOMG! Strawberries!

I had no intention of getting strawberries the last time I went to the market.  But the farmer beckoned me over, offered me a sample, and I couldn’t pass.  These were the sweetest, juiciest, most amazing strawberries I’d had in years.   I scraped together my remaining dollar bills and quarters, and handed them over for a basket of bright, beautiful berries.

Now, I don’t know if you’re like me, but if I find myself in possession of an incredible ingredient like strawberries, I immediately start to think about what I should bake.  Strawberry shortcakes? Strawberry pie? Strawberry preserves? Strawberry crepes?  Strawberry crisp? SO MANY OPTIONS!

But as I munched and slurped away at the berries, fresh out of the basket, I realized that maybe I didn’t need to bake them into some over-the-top confection.  They were treat enough as they were.  Raw.  Fresh.  That’s how I wanted them. They tasted like spring time and summer in my mouth.

I ate the entire basket within a day.

Breakfast:

So Perfect

Sliced strawberries and steel cut oats.  Nothing else.  No syrup or cinnamon or anything.  Just strawberries and oats.  And wow it was good.

And then, I had strawberries for dinner, too!

Strawberry Salad

Talk about a colorful salad!   Spinach, mustard greens, edible flowers, strawberries, fresh tomatoes, avocados, and rainbow carrots… all from the farmer’s market!   Topped with crumbled tofu, nutritional yeast, pepper, and oil & vinegar.

Rainbow Carrot!

The rainbow carrots were so pretty!  And the strawberries were delicious… and I love my life.

I can’t wait until the next farmers’ market!  Maybe next time, I’ll buy two baskets so I can bake some of them.