Food for Love

It all starts with that first Mother's Day breakfast you make. You know the one - Relish and Applesauce Pancakes or something equally revolting that your sleepy mother manages to ingest (or hide) because you are standing at the end of the bed smiling a sloppy smile. As foodies, many of us use our kitchen skills (wackiness), to show affection, love, and thanks. First date dinners, birthday cakes, get-well-soon soups, the list is endless, right?

Yesterday, I made a special batch of cookies for someone who I love very much. She is one of those special lights in the world. You know who I am talking about. They always have bandaids, they know what teas are good for a cold, their purses are likely to have just about anything in them that would help someone in need. These people are also often unaware of their seam bursting goodness and go about life doing good just because of who they are. I was lucky enough to have this person around me while I was pregnant, and she was pivotal in getting me through that time in a country other then my own while missing my own family in a huge way. She has stayed close to Aodhan and I and we are lucky to have visits with her about once a month. Lately there have been (and will be) some new babies born amoungst our community of international friends and she has been right there with these women - supporting, helping and loving. She is a super star and I just love her to bits.

Knowing that we were going to see her today, I made a new cookie so that I could pass some goodness onto someone who does so much for everyone around her. I made Ginger Spice Cookies. Now, these weren't Ginger Snaps - they were Ginger Cookies, retaining all the cookieness that seems to get lost for the sake of snappiness. I have to say, they were pretty darn good, and they should be considering all the love that was packed in them. I hope she is at home right now enjoying a cup of tea and a cookie or two. Here's to you Anne!

Ginger Cookies
(for Anne)
2 cups of whole wheat flour
1 tsp of baking soda
1 tsp of baking powder

1 cup of maple syrup
1/2 cup of olive oil
3 tbsp of freshly grated ginger

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, add wet and stir until just mixed. I used a big soup spoon to capture a good chunk of the dough and then used my mitts to form little hockey puck sized patties. I baked at 350 for 17 minutes.

Aodhan turned 7 months today!!
Wishing everyone cookies and happiness for their weekend to come.

VeganMofo: Day Eight

Mmmm. There are some super delicious meals being prepared for VeganMoFo! So glad I am back online.

Kevin was about ready to pitch some dying bananas last night, when I saved them from the bin. This act of banana-charity meant that I had to get the led out today and make something with them or I would be inviting a Fruit Fly Convention. I searched through a couple of books and found an oldie but a goodie and made the Banana Coconut Cookies from How It All Vegan. How can you go wrong with oats, bananas, and coconut? You can't! These squishy little suckers are great!

Now, why have food without fashion? I admit that I am not in ANY way a fashionista - quite the oppisite in fact. Thrift stores, t-shirts with owls on them, black converse and back packs are the name of my fashion game. Boring maybe, but I have just never had the fashion 'sense' that some people do, and have accepted my geeksheek apparel. I do however see shoes as an essential part of any outfit, something to be considered whether we are talking business suit or jammies (fuzzy slippers anyone?). Don't get me wrong, I only own one pair of heels and I bought them five years ago to wear to a friend's wedding. I am a flat footer for sure. I just don't go in for buying shoes that are supposed to push my rump up for some dude's benefit while simultaneously breaking every bone in my feet. But, I do like a good runner (saucony), a good mary jane (earth-vegan) and I love my vegan Berkinstocks. However, I have been looking high and low for a wicked vegan clog - previously because with teaching you are on your giffers all day, and now...with being a mom, I am still on my feet all day. The ones I found previously - online of course - were either not really clogs, or too ugly to consider purcashing. But then I stumbled on Sanita - The Danish Design shoe folks, and low and behold...they had Sarah. A vegan clog. I loved her from first sight, but the price tag was a little much. Luckily, I have Kevin here to tell me that I need to spend a little money on something other then organic produce once and a while. So, yah, I have my vegan clogs and I vegan-love-em'. They are fabricy goodness on the outside and nice and sturdy on the inside. I highly recommend these babies if you are a floor pounding vegan!

Back To School Baking

It is almost time to head back to work, and despite the days on my calendar still baring witness to my being on holiday, I am writing this post from work. I couldn't help myself. I came in yesterday, managed to get quite a bit of stuff done, and had planned to spend the day indulging myself with things that are Lynnie oriented - the gym, a book, the park, a walk, shopping for quilts and cashews. But alas, the organization and excited-to-get-started monsters gobbled my intentions up this morning on my walk home from my work out, and here, at 11:51 am, I find my lonely self sitting behind my desk. K is across the campus furiously typing away on a (MUCH MUCH MUCH) late graduate paper.

But, it isn't just getting back to work that excites me, it is also all the baking and cooking that can easily go along with starting a new year. I have started making cookies for my kids! I planned on veganizing the well known Belgian cookie treat - Speculous....but, this just isn't possible. At least not without vegan margarine. I thought I could easily swap the butter for oil and applesauce. But, yikes. The sticky mess, no matter how much time I let it sit in the freezer, would ever have rolled out into a dough for pressing my little butterflies into.

Thinking on the fly, I threw in some more ingredients and came up with some oatmeal & raisin cookies, that I admit to having a few more than the chef's rations of. But, at least I know the oven is cookie ready, and I can get down to a few more dozen when I get back from London this weekend.

I am also excited to report that I am ready to jump onto the vegan cupcake bandwagon. I was hesitant at first. I am a little shy of the bakey-bakey part of life outside of bread & cookies. I can make a mean raw avocado and chocolate birthday treat, a hot-damn pumpkin bread, and my vegan chocolate cake isn't too shabby...but cupcakes scare me. I think it is all the pretty little ditties I see on poopie bitches site and being featured all over the place these days. Vegan CupCakes HAVE taken over the world. Which is great!

I just couldn't wait too long to use my squirrel cup cake paper liners, so after the cookies were in the oven I flipped through V-con and found the jelly donut cupcake recipe. I don't like donuts, and I don't like jelly. But I do like apple sauce....so. I held on tight and in totally un-Lyndsay-like fashion (K was beside himself in disbelief) I actually followed the recipe - minus the jelly...and I added vanilla...and cinnamon. Oh god, I didn't stick to the recipe.


I added apple sauce on top rather than jelly....and I didn't end up making a frosting. They rose like little muffins (which I think can be accounted for by my filling the little guys up too high), and the apple sauce was so warm and gooey that I thought adding anything would be silly.

K has chomped through the batch quite well (I got home from the gym and there were TWO wrappers sitting next to him) and the bite I had was pretty darn yummy.

In other news, I found a new favourite (way too upscale) cafe/gourmet shop. It is located in Ixelles commune in Brussels on Place Brugmann. It is called Gaudron Cafe and it has some delectable (totally unvegan) pastries in the front of the shop, in addition to a HUGE array of organic, stylish and well designed products that just sucked my entire life savings out of my pocket. The menu has a couple of veganish options (granola, warm soy milk). It was their great selection of teas that had me as their newest devotee. Finding it rather hard to find even the most regular of chai teas here, I was enamoured (and a bit giddy) with the choices I had to pick from - chai, chai with cinnamon and a tickle of apple, lavender, english breakfast with mint, etc, etc.


I also bought a really nice Presse - sparkling water with fresh juice. I picked up the mandarin orange and was really pleased with the fizzy little bit of fun that I cracked open this morning.

Cookies are the perfect answer for oven-deprived vegans.

I decided to avoid the hard cover cook books today and went (sent K) instead to the grand vegan web. The likes of PPK turned up a chocolate cookie recipe that I tweaked a little bit. Searching for a macaroon recipe I had promised myself to make but, in classic VeganCowGirl way, forgot to bookmark, K found an interesting recipe for vegan macaroons that didn't call for any sugar in the white or brown form. I was game!

The truth: the macaroons taste NOTHING like macaroons, but they are a great substitute for baking a whole loaf of banana bread. The bite sizeness of them works with the (ironically) intense sweetness embedded by the dates, coconut and bananas. The initial recipe of: dates, coconut and 1 banana seemed to be seriously lacking something - so I went a little wild and added oats and vanilla. It really only seemed right - they had to be baked for 15 minutes, and it seemed insane to through them in their without a grain or two.

I ended up with two batches of goodies that will keep us sweet and full for the rest of the weekend and might even need to go into the freezer for desert next week.

They May Not be Macaroons, But They Taste Great, Macaroons

Ingredients:

-1 banana

-8 dates

-1 tsp of vanilla

-1/2 cup of oats

-1/2 cup of coconut

I put everything into my food processor, pulsed it for 30 seconds and then pulled the 'dough' out and added it to my cookie sheet in art deco looking shapes.

They sat in the oven (at 160) for about 15 minutes - they could use a turning half way through.

Belgian Style Vegan Chocolate Bits Cookies

Ingredients:

-1/2 bar of Belgian vegan chocolate: chopped (by one seriously cute geek)

-2 cups of whole wheat flour

-1/4 cup of sugar

-1/2 cup of apple sauce

-2 tablespoons of oil

-vanilla (as you like)

-1/4 cup of cocoa

-1 teaspoon of Cardamom

-2 tablespoons of maple syrup

-2 tablespoons of flax

-1/2 cup of soy milk (plus more if it gets a bit dry)

I blended the soy and flax and set aside. Upon insistence of a back-seat-cook I sifted the flour, cocoa and baking soda in my big bright blue bowl. I added the wet ingredients, the chocolate bits and the flax mix and mixed it all together. It was super mega sticky (wasn't really expecting that) and in the end it seemed a bit more on the cake/scone end of batters, but the cookies, after a 10 minute tan on 180 in the OVENNNNNN, turned out quite wonderfully.

Perhaps the best part of my day was how after buying the new Nick Cave and Vampire Weekend C.D.s a trip to the International Festival was in the cards. And guess what this vegan cowgirl found at the Canadian Booth? President's Choice Maple Syrup (so worth the 7 euro), AND they had a chef making Beaver Tails. Jesus, I could have been in Ottawa - but, alas, the butter and milk in the batter wasn't so vegan. I opted for a bite of a vegetarian spring roll from the Bangladesh booth. Yum.

I hate to share this with my Canadian readers who are still struggling with the cold and damp, but my terrace door is wide open and today officially began patio season. Whop. Whop.

I just wanted to say how great it was to read about Chocolate Covered Vegan's Friendship Day. What a great cause, and a wonderful account of what seemed to be a great day.