Home

Our kitty, Lewis is home, after being missing for two weeks. We are so very thankful to the thoughtful person who called the local shelter to report a stray cat. To say my children (and I) were devestated is an understatement and after two weeks of tears we are so thrilled to have him home. He has been snuggled and petted and snuggled some more and could now very well be the most spoiled cat ever.

So far we've been able to keep Lewis, our bird-rodent-bug hunter extraordinaire, from the chicks, who have grown so much I hardly recognize them as the little fluffballs who came to us two weeks ago. They have feathers and giant chicken feet and a chickenish look in their eye now.

We've enjoyed the last (hopefully) of some very rainy weather by staying in our pj's late, snuggling up with good books, and cooking some delicious breakfast food. I saw the baked oatmeal at http://www.soulemama.com/ and after realizing that life is too short to go without this, decided to make it one morning. I found the recipe here :
http://www.lottieanddoof.com/2011/04/baked-oatmeal/
It was a delicious accompaniment to my usual green smoothie.

Cooking with K

K and I spent the morning preparing some homemade bread for Easter. Now that the weather is nice D and J spend a considerable ammount of time playing outside, but K is really too little to go out on her own. We did a trial one day and she ran right down the driveway and into the street, chasing a ball, so that was the end of that. So when there are things that keep me from heading outside with the kids to play, she is my little helper. Things proceed slowly when there is a little one 'helping out', messes are considerable, and clean up seems to take forever. But I love having her there, learning alonside me, hopefully making memories that she will cherish and share with her little ones someday.

Yum. Honey is delicious.

can you feel the love tonight?

If you can not, for some reason, feel the love, can you at least feel the sugar high? Because we all consumed a whole lotta sweet stuff today.
We spent the weekend crafting and of course baking to get ready for Valentine's Day. The kids made Valentine gnomes out of hershey kisses to give to their friends in our Home Schooling group at today's Valentines Day party. We made cupcakes and cupcake balls dipped in melted chocolate for treats. I found some great vintage valentines and gave one to each of the kids this morning. They had a great time with all their homeschooling friends, handing out valentines and going through their bag to find their favorites from special friends.
DG is away in Tawain for Valentine's Day this year, which is a little sad, but we celebrated over the weekend with a nice night out with friends and family at a wine tasting/auction to benefit the Scituate Animal Shelter. So this year I got to spend Valentines Day with my three wee ones, watching them play with their friends and consume vast ammounts of sugar, which if you ask me is not a bad way to spend the day.

baby it's cold outside

We returned from vacation to another foot of snow on the ground, having missed yet another blizzard or two while we were away. Our driveway is like a skating rink. Literally. You could lace up and skate around out there, no problem. While it's a bit dangerous for driving, the kids love it for playing. And while they played outside in the snow today I made a homemade whole wheat boule, using the standard recipe from 'Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day'. It was delicious, crispy on the outside and soft and moist on the inside. We made short work of it, polishing off half in about five minutes. I think I will need to add this to our weekly recipe list.

yes, we have no bananas

Actually we do have bananas. Lots and lots of bananas. They were looking rather forlorn and left out in my cabinet today so I decided to put them to good use and whip up some delicious vegan treats. We began our morning with some vegan buckwheat banana pancakes and then moved on to some buckwheat banana bread. Can you tell I like the pairing of buckwheat and bananas? The bananas sweeten buckwheat's earthy flavors and add potassium to buckwheat's fiber and magnesium. And they taste yummy together. Two great tastes that taste great together. What could be better?

Vegan buckwheat banana pancakes from Vegetarian Time's Healing Foods Cookbook can be found here http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/10043

I veganized my tried and true all time favorite banana bread recipe from Epicurious using egg replacer and earth's balance vegan butter. I omit the chocolate chips but add a tablespoon or two of ground flax seeds. I used half buckwheat flour and half all-purpose. The kids gobbled it up so quickly, I couldn't even get a picture before they'd began taking slices! You can find it here
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Aunt-Hollys-Banana-Bread-239027

Today was our last day of vacation and it was great to spend it in the kitchen with my four favorite people. And lest you think we eat nothing but sweet treats around here I added a picture of our dinner - braised seitan cutlets in mushroom and red wine sauce, also from Vegetarian Times. This was so delicious I have been dreaming about it ever since. I made a chicken version for my carnivorous husband as well. It is destined to become a family favorite and I can't wait to make it again.

tricks and treats...well, just the treats really.

I had hoped to post this by Halloween, but we had a whirlwind of a weekend so I am a bit late, which seems to be my m.o lately, but oh well. We've been baking all sorts of yummy autumn-inspired foods the past few weeks, including our family favs, pumpkin bread, sweet potato and mushroom lasagne, and apple crisp. For Halloween we decided to bake another of our all-time favorites, with a slight twist. I've been a vegetarian for more than twenty years, and have tried to go vegan several times with less than stellar results. But the more I read and learn about the dairy industry, the less compelled I feel to eat their products. So I decided that this time around I would give up dairy in small increments, and really commit myself to finding substitutes that I can fully enjoy, especially in baking, because I truly believe that life is too short to live without chocolate chip cookies and macaroni and cheese! Finding yummy alternatives to cheese and baked goods has been a challenge for me in the past, but I'm finding that I'm having greater success this time around. There is so much information out there on the blogosphere now, which I never had in my past vegan endeavours.

My favorite vegan blog thus far is veganyumyum.com. Her recipes are delicious, fun, and quirky, but not so weird that I have to go on a specialty-store scavenger hunt to find the ingredients. She has a post for vegan gingerbread cake with "cream cheese" frosting, but I decided to go with my favorite gingerbread recipe and make some vegan adjustments. It is definitely inspired by vegan yum yum's recipe, however. I used her recipe for vegan cream cheese frosting and it was delicious. I definitely recommend checking out her blog for tasty veg-inspired recipes.

Here is the recipe for vegan gingerbread cake, adapted from "Deceptively Delicious"

Ingredients:
Earth Balance vegan margarine
2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 t. baking soda
1 t. ground ginger
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. ground cloves
1/4 t. allspice
1/4 t. salt
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
1 Ener-G egg replacer, pre-mixed
1 cup pureed carrot (I'm not going to even suggest that I steamed and pureed my own carrots. I used jarred baby food, organic, of course)
1/2 cup plain soy yogurt
1/4 cup molasses
2 t. pure vanilla extract
1 t. grated orange zest (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 8x8 baking dishes with Earth Balance margarine and line the bottom with parchment paper. Flour the pans.

Mix the flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and salt in a small bowl. Set aside

In a large mixing bowl, beat the sugar, oil, and pre-mixed egg replacer until smooth. Beat in the carrot puree, soy yogurt, molasses, vanilla, and optional orange zest. Add the flour mixture and mix until smooth.

Pour the batter into the prepared pans and smooth the top. bake for 25 - 30 minutes. Once cool, frost one cake with vegan cream cheese frosting, and stack the other cake on top, then frost the top of the other cake. You can keep it whole or cut it into small squares.

Here is the recipe for vegan cream cheese frosting from veganyumyum.com:
8oz. tofutti cream cheese
1/4 Earth Balance margarine
1 lb. confectioners sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract

Beat all the ingredients with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Enjoy!

baking spree continued

I have been dreaming about baking pistachio cupcakes ever since I recently saw them on a friend's blog. She has all sorts of yummy recipes posted and I just had to try this one. I frosted them with a honey cream cheese frosting, which was a bit heavy for the light, airy cupcake, I think next time I will try her pomegranate icing instead. yum. Here is a link to her blog, but I must warn you - you might find yourself baking uncontrollably, or salivating at the very least if you read it.

(as usual, blogger will not let me insert a link - as usual, i can't figure out why. when my tech-savvy engineer husband can't figure it out, i raise the white flag while yelling "damn you blogger! damn you!)

but you can cut and paste http://greenroommag.com/spoonful/ to read her blog.

baking spree

I don't know why, but I have a desire to bake all sorts of goodies lately. Today we baked homemade bread. I recently bought the book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, the sequel to Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and yesterday we made our first batch of whole wheat dough. My three helpers measured flour, which gets a bit messy when you have a toddler who insists on measuring things herself, whisked eggs and watched the dough rise, checking on it every so often to see how much bigger it had become. D even mentioned to J that the reason we could mix the water and oil together is that we added eggs, which act as an emulsifier. I was glad to see that he remembered some of our chemistry from earlier this year!

My next baking project this week will be some cupcakes that I have been dreaming about since I saw them on a friend's blog. Can't wait.