Baking Blitz

I've been doing a fair amount of baking lately. The Apple "Waldorf" Bread from 1000 Vegan Recipes is studded with walnuts, raisins, and apple slices, and goes perfectly with pumpkin butter.

 

Another way to use up extra apples would be these Apple Crisp Muffins from the Happy Herbivore cookbook. I slather a couple of warmed muffins with melted butter for a breakfast that makes waking up a little easier. 

Here are two recipes I made from Let Them Eat Vegan!  I've become a big fan of Dreena Burton's cookbooks because she uses wholesome ingredients, rarely using white flour or sugar. These Krispie Chip Cookies were a little dry, but my measurements may have been off or something.

Tony requested that I make him some breakfast bars to grab on the way to work, so I turned to Dreena's Proper Healthy Granola Bars recipe. I have made it three times now and I love how versatile it is. She calls for sunflower seeds, hemp seeds, raisins and chocolate chips, but I've found you can sub in pretty much anything. Tony really liked a version I made with peanuts, almonds, cashews, coconut and raisins.

My mom and dad sent the kids some dot markers, tons of fun for little budding artists!

Mac n' Cheese Disappointment

Today we were in a snacky mood when lunchtime rolled around. I made some kalamata olive hummus and the Garlicky Baby Lima Bean Spread from Vegan Soul Kitchen. I happen to love lima beans, so it's fitting that this dip was the first recipe I made from this cookbook. It's strong and spicy, flavored with red pepper flakes and, of course, garlic. 

My favorite thing about Vegan Soul Kitchen is not the recipes, however. It's the fact that author Bryant Terry suggests music to go with each dish. His taste is so cool and eclectic. If you want to check out the tunes, Oliver Danni posted the entire playlist on Grooveshark back during Vegan MoFo.

For dinner, I made the mac n' cheese from Happy Herbivore.  I'd been having great results with this book, which I received for Christmas. This led me to have such high confidence in this recipe that I made a double batch. That probably jinxed me. It was gross. The sauce had a weird smell, and it turns out I don't like rice pasta. Or maybe I overcooked it. The package directions said to cook it for like 16 minutes, which seemed crazy. It was rubbery and slimy. I like rice noodles in pad thai, but this rice elbow pasta was not working.

It looks good, right? The kids liked it, so it was not a total waste.

It's movie time...aren't Jackson and Olivia cute and cozy in their new sleeping bags? They love to snuggle up in them and eat popcorn.

Back to Normal

I always feel blue when it is time to take down the Christmas decorations. Halloween through New Years is my favorite time of the year. Everyone seems to be in just a little bit better mood, they can't help it.  There are parties and family gatherings, not to mention my birthday. Best of all, Tony gets lots of time off work. We get to do things as a family. We get to stay up late, knowing we can sleep in (as much as Jackson and Olivia will allow, anyway). It's been wonderful.

Then January shows up. Tony went back to work today. Jackson had school.  Everything is back to normal.

But, as I'm trying to remember today, normal doesn't have to mean blah.

For breakfast I had oats with chia seeds, walnuts, blackberries, and a drizzle of caramel-like brown rice syrup. Super good.

Blackberries were on sale at the supermarket. This is how much I started out with...

...but as you can see, only six remained for my oats after Olivia ate her fill. Get those antioxidants, baby girl!

After putting the Christmas tree in its box, taking the wreath off the front door, and recycling the paper snowflakes, I headed into the kitchen to cheer myself up. I don't know about emotional eater, but emotional cooker? Totally. An hour later, I had a sink full of dirty dishes and a noticeably improved mood.

From Vegan Diner, which I received for Christmas, I made Old-Fashioned Tomato Soup and Smoky Curls.  If all the recipes are as good as these two, I'm going to get a ton of use out of this book in 2012. The soup has loads of basil, which is a huge plus as far as I'm concerned.

The Smoky Curls recipe is basically a method of turning soy curls into bacon. We were getting a little burnt out on soy curl tacos, so this was an awesome discovery. I piled the curls onto rye bread along with lettuce, tomato, and Veganaise, for a fantastic BLT. 

Finally, I made some Fruity Cereal Bars, from Happy Herbivore. Just like the HH pad thai I made yesterday, this recipe came together in under ten minutes. Yes!

I think I make a pretty good effort to feed my family healthy food, but there is always room for improvement. I sometimes get lazy...like giving Jackson and Olivia Nutri-Grain bars for breakfast. I know they have high fructose corn syrup and little nutritional value; I buy them anyway. I don't want to anymore. It's not exactly a New Year's resolution, but I feel like I can do better for my little dudes. This is one small change I can make.  Normal can always be improved.

Did you make any New Year's resolutions?

Playground and Pad Thai

Our nearest playground is small, but that doesn't stop Jackson and Olivia from having a blast. (After all, they are small, too.) Jackson loves the dinosaurs.

Livi will go down the slide over and over...and over.

After wearing the kids out, I made the Cheater Pad Thai from the Happy Herbivore cookbook, which I received for Christmas.  It's called that because it isn't completely fat-free like most of the recipes in the book. But it's still under 300 calories per serving. That appeals to me because I ate a lot over the past few weeks. I could definitely stand to cut back as the new year begins.

This was the fastest pad thai ever. While the noodles cook, you make your sauce and crush some peanuts, and you're good to go. The recipe called for topping the noodles with bean sprouts, but my supermarket was sold out of them. Weird. So that I wasn't just eating noodles for dinner, I roasted a crown of broccoli with a ton of minced garlic and served that on the side.

Besides the cookbook, I got to break in another of my Christmas presents -- a kitchen scale! I've wanted one for awhile because so many recipes give amounts in terms of weight, and I feel like my approximations are sometimes way off.  It was cool to be able to weigh out precisely 4 oz. of noodles.

What was your favorite present this year? Or did you get any new kitchen gadgets that you are trying out?