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.

The past few days have been a whirl of activity.  I was called at the very last minute to temp for the dean’s office at Stanford.   On three consecutive days.   Seriously.  I got the calls around 8:20 am, with the expectation that I could be at the office by 9.  It is extremely stressful to be lounging about, drinking your tea, filling your head with visions of shamrock sugar cookies, only to be whisked away to the land of fluorescent lights and post it notes.

I felt like some sort of lame super hero.

Alter-ego : Temp Girl.

Powers:  Answering phones, making copies, sorting mail, and smiling.

In a blink of an eye, I shimmied into a plaid pencil skirt, tucked a grey H&M sweater into the waistband, hopped into a pair of patent blue mary jane wedges (vegan, duh), and was literally running out the door to catch the train.

Shamrock cookies were out and collating was in.

I had SO many good ideas for Irish treats.  I LOVE St. Patrick’s day.  Maybe it’s because I own so much green.  Goes with the hair and skin you know.   It’s the one day a year that I can wear all green all over!    Also, I’m awfully fond of my Irish ancestors.

Anyway, I got home Tuesday night, my poor little mouth a little weary from 8 hours of receptionist smiles, and I realized I had to make something… ANYTHING… that was even vaguely Irish.

Alas, we were dangerously low on so many ingredients!  But has that ever stopped me before?  I didn’t have enough time to bike to the store if I wanted to be in bed by a reasonable hour, so I decided to just use whatever I had on hand.

My “Irish” feast:

Irish Inspired Dinner

Mashed (sweet)potatoes, topped with “Irish” stew, and farls!

Mmmmm.

Not too shabby eh?

I wanted to make a vegan version of a cross between this stew and this stew.

I love this bowl.

I originally wanted to use seitan to sub the beef, but I had just used the last of my previous batch, and I didn’t have enough time to make more from scratch.   So I borrowed a page from Isa Chandra Moskowitz and used lentils and mushrooms to give the stew a “meaty” flavor.

To further complicate matters, I had no potatoes!  We don’t keep them in the house.  Because honestly, why would you eat regular old potatoes when you can have sweet potatoes?  And sweet potatoes I had a plenty.  Sorry, Irish purists.  Mashed sweet potatoes it is.

The next stumbling block was my lack of stout.  No stout!  How can you make Irish stew without stout?   All I had in the fridge was some non-alcoholic O’Doul’s.  Well, O’Doul’s is an Irish sounding name, and a girl’s gotta work with what she’s got.  Into the stew it went!

Non-alcoholic Stew.

Verdict?  Delicious.  Amazing.  Wonderful.  One of my favorite stews.  Mmmm.

Stew!

Irish Stew

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 cups chopped mushrooms
• 1 bottle Irish beer (preferably stout, but work with what ya got!)
• 1 cup dry lentils
• 2 carrots, cut into chunks
• 1 large sweet potato, cubed
• 1 large tomato, diced
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1/4 cup tomato sauce
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon tarragon
• A dash of garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Directions:

1. Rinse the lentils and place in a pot with the beer.  Put on stovetop, cover, and let simmer.
2. Sautée the mushrooms in olive oil.  Add to lentils & beer.
3. Add vegetable broth, vegetables, tomato sauce, flour, and spices.  Cover and let simmer until everything is tender and delicious.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Bright, beautiful, and deeeeelicious.

Now we come to the Mashed Sweet Potatoes.  I’ve been known to make some pretty decadent and delicious mashed sweet potatoes.  However, lately I’ve been going a much simpler route.  I discovered that if you bake sweet potatoes in foil , they come out so moist and sweet and perfect, that you don’t even need to add butter, sour cream, milk, or any of those shenanigans. All you need to do is wrap the potato in foil, stick it in the oven at 500, pull it out when it’s super soft, cut it open with a knife (being careful not to burn yourself), use a spoon to scoop the sweet potato out of its skin, mashed it up with a fork, add a dash of salt… BAM!  Done.

Soda Farl

So that left me with the Irish soda farls.  I wanted to follow this super simple recipe, subbing clabbered soymilk for buttermilk…. but we were out of soymilk!   Curses!  But I couldn’t give up on the farls.  I asked myself, “Dina, what would the Irish do?”  I know!  They’d use beer.  Right?  Hehe.  And so I present to you:

Irish Beer Farls

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 scant cup of beer
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Dash of lemon juice

Directions:

1. Preheat heavy based flat griddle or skillet on medium to low heat.
2. Mix flour, baking soda, and salt.  Make a well and pour in beer and lemon juice.
3. Mix together and knead only very very lightly.  You don’t want to produce gluten for soda breads! Add more flour if it’s a little too sticky.
4. Place on a floured surface and flatten into a circle about 1/2 inch thick.  Cut into quarters with a floured knife.
5. Sprinkle flour on the base of the pan and cook farls for 6-8 minutes on each side, or until golden brown.

It tasted something like a beer pancake…  Quite good really.  I ate two of them right off the griddle!

How farl would you go for a farl?

Cookies, cakepops, cupcakes, brownies, candies, and shamrock shakes all would have been fun to make for St. Patrick’s day… but maybe it’s better that I didn’t have time for all that.  This was way healthier, really good, and made me feel a little more authentic.

I really love Hannah Kaminsky’s blog, Bittersweet.  Her photography is always beautiful and I have full confidence in her recipes.  Even when she says bizarre things like, “beans, they’re what’s for dessert.”

I was so intrigued and inspired by the idea of a sweet chocolate hummus spread, that I put it on my to-do list and ignored it for a couple years… hehe.  Ah but I never forgot about it!  I’d really been meaning to try the recipe for soooo long… and I finally have!

Chocolate Chickpea Spread

I could have eaten it right out of the jar, but I thought it would feel a little more nutritious if I shmeared it on a whole wheat bagel thin, comme ci:

Chocolate Chickpea Spread on a Bagel Thin

Part of this complete breakfast!

Sunday Morning Breakfast

Of course, I didn’t follow her recipe exactly… when do I ever?   I use recipes more as inspiration and jumping off points, rather than blueprints.

Without further ado, voila! La recette:

Chocolate Chickpea Spread

1 15-Ounce Can Chickpeas
1 Tablespoon Almond Butter
3 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1/2 Cup Cocoa Powder (I used Raw)
1/4 Cup Granulated Sugar
2 shots Espresso
2 Teaspoons Vanilla Extract
1/2 Teaspoon Salt

Directions: Drain and rinse the chickpeas.  Throw everything into a food processor.  Process until smooth!  Could it be easier?

I used Almond Butter because it has a milder flavor than peanut butter and wouldn’t be competing as much with the chocolate.   I used the raw cocoa powder because that’s what we have, and because it’s better for you than the processed kind.  I would have used agave instead of sugar, but it looks like we’re out.  Sad face!  So, I decided that I would at the very least cut the sugar in half, and then if it needed any extra sweetening, I would add a bit of stevia.  However, it was really plenty sweet for me with just the 1/4 cup of sugar, so I think next time I’ll reduce it down to 2 tablespoons and then add a sprinkle of stevia if necessary.   I subbed espresso for coffee powder because we happen to have an excellent espresso machine chez moi.  Also, using shots of espresso instead of the powder made the water at the end of her recipe completely unnecessary.  Finally,  I doubled the vanilla because pretty much everything is better with extra vanilla…

In the end, it tastes somewhere in between a mocha and my mom’s chocolate cake.  Basically, it’s delicious.   And full of all the goodness, fiber, and protein that you’d want from chickpeas… not to mention the antioxidants from the raw cocoa!

I’m going to go ahead and call it a healthy breakfast.

I can’t wait to cover everything with it.  Nothing is safe from the chickpeas now!  I’m going to get apples at the farmer’s market today, and you’d better believe I’m going to smother at least one apple with chickpea spread.  I also think it would be a delicious way to top my oatmeal, so I’m looking forward to that as well.  Heck, I could even use it to top some whole wheat muffins and call them cupcakes!

Om nom nom!