Hubby's Grownup Breakfast

So, I don't have a picture for this quick post because Sam took this smoothie with him to work this morning. Sam is trying to eat more fruits and vegetables -- I'm so proud of him! I'm hoping it goes well, since he has allergies to many fruits-- we're just kind of trying to ignore that for now and see if he can eat them. Maybe we'll get a better plan in the future, maybe digestive enzymes or go organic? I don't know if either of those would help. This morning I sent him off with a cup of coffee instead of an energy drink, and a smoothie instead of a breakfast sandwich. The smoothie was darn tasty, too, if you ask me. When I texted him to ask how his new breakfast was he responded that it tasted "grown up...in an ok but I'll have to get used to it way." I'm deciding to take that as a compliment!

Makes about 10 oz.

• 1/2 small gala (or other) apple
• 1/2-2/3 cup frozen strawberries
• 1 medium banana, peeled, broken in half, and frozen
• 1/2-2/3 cup orange juice
• 2 large spinach leaves

• If you have a high-powered blender, just put everything in and blend it up.
• If you don't, let the banana and strawberries sit out of the freezer in a bowl for a few minutes and add the orange juice, apple, and spinach to your blender. Blend until as smooth as it'll get and then add the frozen fruit. Blend until no longer chunky. Pour into a glass or blender bottle and enjoy!

This is a perfect beginner smoothie, it doesn't look green or taste funny. It's mostly just orangey-fruity tasting. Sam actually eats spinach really well but he's never had any sort of green drink so we're going slow on that end. Who knows, this time next year, he may be taking a green juice to work in the the morning!

Chocolate Orange Oatmeal Cookies For Your Valentine!

These would be perfect to make for your valentine tomorrow. They have no sugar, no oil, and no flour so they're the perfect treat, even for breakfast! I may or may not have made these five times over the last week. I got the idea from this blog and I've been enjoying them immensely.

 They're super easy and there are endless variations. The basic recipe is this:

• 1 banana
• 1/2 cup oats -- I like old fashioned

And my favorite variations are:

• add the zest of an orange, 1/4 tsp stevia, and 1 square of dark chocolate chopped up
• or 1 tsp cinnamon and 3 tablespoons waalnuts

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Smash up the banana with a spoon or fork, add the oats and other ingredients and mix.
• Drop by the tablespoonful onto a greased cookie sheet.
• Bake for 15-20 minutes.
• Enjoy with your loved one! Or by yourself. They're really pretty healthy, I promise.

Check out the bits of orange zest -- so yummy!

 Nutrition for 1/9th of recipe, or 1 cookie: cals: 37kcal | fat: 0.89g | carbs: 6.99g | prot: 0.87g

Also, check out the facebook page for Direct Relief. 105 year old Edythe wants 105,000 "likes" for her favorite charity. Please help her out by "liking" Direct Relief's page!

Yogurt Review!

So I went to Whole Foods a little while ago and got some vegan yogurt. I'd only ever tried non-dairy yogurt once, so I got a couple of different ones to try. Greek Style So Delicious Chocolate, WholeSoy Lemon, and Amande Coconut. 

Sorry for the eh picture, I took it quickly and then ate the yogurt, so.... They were all pretty high in calories, but I figured, if it's good, it'll be worth it. The So Delicious was... not good in my opinion. The Greek Style-ness was weirdly thick and it didn't really taste like chocolate. The Amande was pretty good, but I didn't think it was super special. Anyway, the best by far was the WholeSoy Lemon-- it is amazing! It's creamy and lemon-y and all around great. I had it with fruit, and it's especially good with pineapple and blueberries. So seriously, if you're looking for some tangy vegan creaminess, this is the way to go. So go ahead, enjoy!

Carrot-Cake Muffins with Molasses Buttercream

Just look at these. The bits of raisin and carrot, the crystallized sugar on top, the swirl of caramel-y molasses buttercream. Wow, they're good. And perfect for ushering in the fall. Nights are starting to cool down (which for us means getting down to 80 every now and then) and bugs are making their merry little way into the house (not the best harbinger of fall). Soon, we'll be able to wear jackets and snuggle up on our couches with mugs of hot tea. Maybe it's not blazing hot where you live and you already do this. Either way, these carrot-cake muffins are delicious.

The recipe for the muffins is from Simple Vegan!, which was in a giveaway package I won from Your Vegan Mom. She even wrote about this recipe here! I think this is the first thing I've made from here, and if it's any indication of the rest of the recipes, I'll be making more! It was already pretty healthy, so I didn't feel like I needed to substitute anything. This book seems like it's filled with really simple (hence the name), relatively healthy recipes. The only negative I'd give it so far is that it's so simple in terms of vegan knowledge-- for example, in one of the asides it mentions that the only chocolate vegans can eat is some kinds of dark chocolate. No mention of all the lovely vegan products out there that are milk or white! I think this could be off-putting to old vegans who know better or new vegans who might feel more restricted than they need to. We have lots of options, new vegans!

Besides that, it looks like a really good resource and was published by the folks at Good Housekeeping, which means both that the recipes have been extensively tested by vegans and non-vegans, and that vegan eating is continuing to make it's way into the mainstream-- two very awesome things! The buttercream is my own recipe, and it is flipping delicious if I do say so myself. Which I do. Now, after all of that chatter, on to the recipes!

Carrot-Cake Muffins
makes 6

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup quick oats (I think regular old-fashioned would work well too)
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (recipe follows if you don't have it)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup plus 2 T almond milk (or other non-dairy milk)
• 2 T unsweetened applesauce
• 1 1/2 T vegetable oil
• 1 tsp molasses
• 1 cup shredded carrot  (mine was 1 large carrot)
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 3 tsps coarse sugar (the stuff I have is from Wilton)

Directions

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
•  I almost always halve muffin and cupcake recipes, so my version makes 6. Mix all of the dry ingredients in one bowl-- from the beginning of the list through the sugar.
• Mix wet ingredients in another bowl-- the almond milk, applesauce, vegetable oil, and molasses. The original recipe calls for brown sugar but I was out and adding the molasses here gives a brown sugar taste!
• Mix the 2 bowls together and fold in the raisins and carrots. The optional walnuts would be lovely but I didn't have any. If you do, fold in 2 T here.
• Fill your muffin cups (I used liners for easier portability and less cleanup!). They will be pretty darn full.
• Top with the coarse sugar. You can use regular sugar or just omit it, but the coarse kind really gives it that bakery/coffee shop feel. And don't we all like to feel fancy, even at home?
• Bake for about 25 minutes.
• Eat plain, with a bit of non-dairy margarine, or with my molasses buttercream!

For one of 6: cals: 188kcal | fat: 4.61g | carbs: 34.83g | prot: 2.86g


Pumpkin Pie Spice

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 4 teaspoons ground nutmeg
• 4 teaspoons ground ginger
• 3 teaspoons ground allspice

Directions

• I didn't have any pumpkin pie spice (you can tell I didn't plan on making these muffins, no?) but I had all of the ingredients to make it. I used this recipe and it turned out beautifully! Just put everything in a small jar and shake it up. Then it's ready to use in your muffins, plus extra for pie or oatmeal later!

 Molasses Buttercream

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup of your favorite margarine
• 1 tsp molasses
• 1-2 cups powdered sugar

Directions

• Beat the margarine and molasses together with an electric mixer.
• Slowly add the sugar in, mixing after each addition, until your desired consistency is reached. Mine never got as thick as a normal buttercream-- I think the liquid in the molasses changed things up a bit, but just pop it in the fridge and it'll firm up!
• Spread on everything and eat with a spoon (I won't judge, I did).

For 2 T. Based on using 1.5 cups sugar: cals: 115kcal | fat: 2.52g | carbs: 23.07g | prot: 0.00g


And since this post didn't have very many pictures, I'll leave you with this one. This is March, one of the kitties we rescued a few months ago. I wrote about them in this post. He's normally very reserved but he loves posing for the camera-- this is his "fierce" pose. Cracks me up every time I see it. I'll be sure to put up pics of the other two soon!

Mmm, Mocha Coconut

It is the season of the Mocha Coconut Frap at Starbucks. I don't go often (a couple of times a year probably) but ever since I tried this flavor, my plan is to try to go at least once in the summer for the Mocha Coconut. I actually hadn't tried it until I went vegan, but I was looking up Starbucks vegan options last year on veggieboards.com and found that people love it! I'm not normally a mocha or coconut fan, so I was surprised it even sounded good, but I tried it and I was hooked! Just make sure to order it with soy milk, without the whip or chocolate drizzle to make it vegan!

They have a coupe of vegan snack options too, like roasted nuts, fruit chews (yes, they're vegan!) and some crazy-good salt and pepper popcorn. So this morning I'm hanging out at Starbucks, blogging, and enjoying my Mocha Coconut Frap and popcorn!

Blueberry Pancakes

Wow, these are good. My sweet husband satisfied my craving for blueberry pancakes the other day-- he's the resident pancake-cooking expert in our house. The batter comes from one of my favorite blogs-- Maple Spice. Here's her recipe for pancakes and waffles. They are pretty perfect on their own, but I added blueberries for their beautiful burst of flavor and color. I think next time, I might try a little more liquid because I prefer my pancakes a little less puffy. These also freeze beautifully-- I froze 3 per baggy and then used the toaster or microwave to heat for a near-instant breakfast.

Blueberry Pancakes

makes 12 medium pancakes

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 3 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar (powdered or granulated-- agave or maple would probably work also)
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 1/4 cups almond or soy milk
• 1/2 cup sparkling water
• 1 3/4 cups fresh blueberries
• 1 tablespoon margarine

Directions:

•  Combine the first 4 ingredients (the dry ingredients), then add the next 3 (the liquid ingredients). Toss the blueberries on top.
• Stir gently to combine without beating the air out of the batter.
• From here on the directions are according to Sam: Heat a skillet to medium heat, add 1/2 the margarine, and allow to bubble for a minute.
• Then scoop batter into the pan by 1/4 to 1/2 cup and wait until the pancake starts to bubble up on top.
• Flip over and cook until golden, adding more margarine if needed.
• To freeze, cool completely and freeze in baggies for up to a month.

1/12 recipe: cals: 126kcal | fat: 3.39g | carbs: 21.55g | prot: 2.41g

Banana Blueberry Breakfast Bowl

This is a super quick and easy breakfast. I like to eat my oatmeal cold and not cooked-- just pour some non-dairy milk over some oatmeal and go. I think it has a better texture that way. Next time I'll probably double everything but the flax and maybe add some more oatmeal. So yummy.

Ingredients:

 

1/2 large banana

1/3 cup blueberries

1 tablespoon milled flax

2 tablespoons old fashioned oats

1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk

Directions:

Mix together and enjoy!