Update from the trees

Remember these guys?  They are making progress!

Apricot harvest soon!  We'll need all our friends to come and pick and then enjoy!

French Toast vegan-style

Unfortunately, I gave myself an earworm on that title.  I now have Gangnam style going through my head.  Hopefully it won't happen to you.  (Heh, as if these first two sentences won't seal the deal and get it running through your head if the title didn't.)

Okay, for that introduction, this better be worth it, eh? 

OMG, it is!  I have been exploring Dreena Burton's website and I'm about to give her a genius award.  I loved her Banana Bread (linked off my post here) and now I love her French Toast!  I only liked french toast every once in a while, but my girls missed french toast. Two out of three loved it and so did the husband. I agree with her and think it was every bit as good as egg and dairy french toast, if not better--there you go.  

The recipe is on her site, and here's a copy in case her site ever goes away (doubtful, but who knows). 


1 cup vanilla non-dairy milk (I used almond)
2 tbsp flax meal 
1⁄2 cup silken firm tofu (I used Mori Nu)
1⁄4 tsp cinnamon 
1⁄8 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (I skipped this; not a big nutmeg fan)
1⁄8 tsp sea salt1 tsp neutral-flavored oil (I skipped this)
8 – 9 slices bread of choice (I used sourdough; see Dreena's site for a note for wheat-free/gluten-free)
2 – 3 tsp organic neutral flavored oil (or more, if needed, for frying)

Pour the non-dairy milk, flax meal, tofu, cinnamon, and salt in the blender  and blend until very smooth and thick (it will get thicker as it sits a little while and the flax absorbs some of the liquid). (My note, I added more almond milk as I was cooking when I thought it was too thick.) Make sure your pan is preheated. Dip a slice of bread in the batter. Turn over and let the bread get covered with batter, then place it in the pan to cook. I used a pan over medium heat.  I added a little oil for the first piece of toast and then my Green pan can do the rest of the toast without more oil added. Cook the toast about for 4 minutes each side, until lightly brown (try to flip only once so that the batter will set and brown nicely on the bread). Serve with pure maple syrup or eat plain... (I don't like to add maple syrup when it's not in a recipe. I love it in recipes.)


Here's a not so great picture of the french toast cooking... I couldn't take pictures after it was cooked 'cause the girls ate it too fast.  Someday, I'll get a nice presentation going. For now, you get the "just the facts" type of pictures.

My biggest helper

Here's my biggest helper... We were trying to make a low-sugar brownie. We made something chocolatey, but I wouldn't call it a brownie---so no recipe to share. It was still tasty, but more work must be done. For Kira's birthday, she wants to take gluten-free, vegan, no nuts brownies to school. I've found gluten-free, vegan, but they were made with almond flour. We'll see if one can make a g-f, vegan, no nuts brownie; it's a new challenge.

New! Scanpan!

Look, it's my new HUGE scanpan! 14 inches to make our favorite pancakes.

I got my first scanpan in 2010; it lasted about a year with excellent no-stick. Back then, I was still making eggs in it, and I'm hoping that if I just use this pan for pancakes it will last longer.

I made approximately 30 pancakes last Sunday with NO OIL in the pan. They came out beautifully. See linked recipe for more information.

Play it again, Sam (and Banana Bread)

You know you like a recipe when you make it two nights in a row. Tonight we sautéed broccoli and onions and had it with our the Pasta Primevera Sauce.  I don't count tonight as left-overs because I made more of the sauce and fresh pasta.  In a previous post, I imagined this would be good with broccoli; I was right, the sauce is lovely with broccoli.

I am now stuffed (again).  Walking on the treadmill and blogging at my treadmill desk is much better than sitting.

In addition, tonight, I baked some banana chocolate chip muffins. I know lots of folks know and love Dreena Burton's recipes. I've only made a few, but when I saw this one, I knew I had to make it. I love maple syrup as a sweetener.  I wrote a teeny bit about it here, and by write, I mean I made links to others. The other thing that drew me in is that 1/3 of a cup of maple syrup is what I typically use in a recipe. I don't like it sweet. Here's the link to Dreena Burton's web site and the recipe pasted below in case it ever disappears from the web. Everything in italics is from her site.
 
Ingredients (1 bread or 12 muffins)
1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour (or 1 cup + 3-4 tbsp spelt flour for wheat-free version)
3/4 cup oat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 cup pureed overripe banana (see note)
1/3 cup pure maple syrup
1/2 cup plain non-dairy milk
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
3-4 tbsp non-dairy mini or regular chocolate chips (optional)

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, combine pureed banana, maple syrup, milk and vanilla. Add wet mixture to dry, and add in chocolate chips (if using), and stir through until just well combined (don’t overmix). Wipe a loaf pan lightly with oil (or use a silicone loaf pan). Pour batter into pan and bake for 43-48 minutes, until golden and a toothpick or skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Makes 1 quick bread.
Notes:
If you have an immersion blender, puree several medium-large overripe bananas in a deep, large cup, then measure to get your 1 cup. If you don’t have an immersion blender, mash banana very well.
To make muffins instead of a quick bread: Pour mixture into a 12-cup muffin pan fitted with cupcake liners. Bake for 17-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Remove, let cool for a few minutes in pan, and then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely

My notes:
I mash my bananas. It doesn't seem worth it to dirty a blender for them. I crossed out the cinnamon and nutmeg because I'm not a fan of cinnamon and chocolate together EXCEPT when pumpkin is involved.  Maybe someday I'll get past this, or not. I made the muffin version and used my silicone muffin pan and no oil.

They came out beautiful and tasty! Pictures if I remember to take some of them before we eat them.  Heh.

(pictures added 5/5/2013)

I imagine we'll be making this recipe often in the future. The girls are excited to have homemade muffins for lunch; tomorrow, they head back to school (after spring break). The muffin recipe is a lot like other recipes I make, except no flax. I'm a big flax fan, but these muffins are very light and moist--fun for a change. It's been a good cooking weekend. Now if I were only done grading papers for my class. (Soon!)

Oh!  I got a new scanpan.... I took pictures of it and I need to write about it. Hopefully tomorrow!  

Pasta Primevera revisited

2 weeks ago, I made Pasta Primevera from Forks over Knives. See my post and review here. It was great, but I couldn't get all the girls to eat it since the veggies and the sauce were cooked together. Tonight, I ran to my favorite produce market and saw asparagus. I got a hankering and some inspiration. I decided to take apart the recipe and make things separately and use asparagus. Here's what I did:

Sauce

4 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
1 cup raw cashews
2 cup soy milk
1 cup oat flour
garlic (to taste 1-4 cloves)
2 teaspoons dried basil
2 teaspoons dried oregano
(Double the other recipe, but I made more noodles and I wanted to have some left over to try on broccoli and kale!)

Pasta
16 ounces of whole wheat fusili
(Not gluten free, but you can use whatever noodle you like! The quinoa noodles that were in the original recipe were great, but I didn't have any and didn't go to the store that had them.)

Veggies
1 medium onion
2 bunches of fresh asparagus
enough veggie broth to first sauté the onions and then the asparagus (I had to add more as I started the asparagus.)
cherry tomatoes


First, I ground the cashews and oats into flour.

At the same time (in 3 pans):
I heated the 4 cups of vegetable broth, and the non-dairy milk with the garlic, basil, and oregano.
I boiled the water for the pasta.
I sautéed the onions in veggie broth.

I cooked the pasta while the onions and sauce ingredients heated. The pasta finished and I drained it; the onions finished and I set them aside; then I mixed in the oat flour and cashews in the veggie broth, non-dairy milk, and spices.  I stirred forever trying to get it smooth; it was very clumpy.  I would have stuck it back in my blender to smooth it, but I already had our green smoothie blending in the blender.  With a lot of stirring, the sauce turned out just fine without the blender.

I mixed the sauce and the pasta (not all of the sauce, just enough to cover the noodles well), and then set about cooking the asparagus.  I gave the younger two girls their bowls of noodles and sauce and then served Nick, Natalie, and me the good stuff....  noodles with the heavenly asparagus, a little more sauce, and cherry tomatoes. When I presented this to Nick, he ran to get the camera and snapped the picture below.

And now the report of who ate it...  Kira and Tia (the younger two girls) ate a LOT of the sauce with noodles. They drank their kale smoothie so I didn't force the asparagus on them. Nat had two large-ish bowls (with veggies).  Nick and I stopped (mostly) at one bowl.  I will make this again.  As I thought when I made it the first time, it's a very flexible dish! The sauce is great with asparagus. It'd be super with any vegetable.  Enjoy!

Protein!

From the vegetarian resource group: http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.php

(copied and pasted...)

Reed Mangels, PhD, RD weighs in on the "How much protein do I need?" question. She's the author of the "Protein in the Diet" chapter in the 5th edition of "Simply Vegan". Here's the short answer: Most of us need .41 grams of protein per pound that we weigh. For me, that's 50+ grams of protein (more for extra exercise), about 12% of my calories. Vegan athletes’ protein needs can range from 0.36 to 0.86 grams of protein per pound (2).

Here's the LONGER answer, with examples of how to do the math.

"How much protein do we need?

The RDA recommends that we take in 0.8 grams of protein for every kilogram that we weigh (or about 0.36 grams of protein per pound that we weigh) (1).

This recommendation includes a generous safety factor for most people. When we make a few adjustments to account for some plant proteins being digested somewhat differently from animal proteins and for the amino acid mix in some plant proteins, we arrive at a level of 0.9 gram of protein per kilogram body weight (0.41 grams per pound).

If we do a few calculations we see that the protein recommendation for vegans amounts to close to 10% of calories coming from protein.

[For example, a vegan male weighing 174 pounds could have a calorie requirement of 2,600 calories. His protein needs are calculated as 174 pounds x 0.41 g/pound = 71 grams of protein. 71 grams of protein x 4 calories/gram of protein = 284 calories from protein. 284 divided by 2,600 calories = 10.9% of calories from protein.]

If we look at what vegans are eating, we find that, typically, between 10-12% of calories come from protein (3). This contrasts with the protein intake of non-vegetarians, which is close to 14-18% of calories.

So, in the United States it appears that vegan diets are commonly lower in protein than standard American diets. Remember, though, with protein, more (than the RDA) is not necessarily better. There do not appear to be health advantages to consuming a high protein diet. Diets that are high in protein may even increase the risk of osteoporosis (4) and kidney disease (5).

References:

1. Food and Nutrition Board, Institute of Medicine. Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2002.

2. Rodriguez NR, DiMarco NM, Langley S. Position of the American Dietetic Association, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine: Nutrition and athletic performance. J Am Diet Assoc 2009;109:509-27.

3. Mangels R, Messina V, Messina M. The Dietitian’s Guide to Vegetar-ian Diets, 3rd ed. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning, 2011.

4. Sellmeyer DE, Stone KL, Sebastian A, et al. A high ratio of dietary animal to vegetable protein increases the rate of bone loss and the risk of fracture in postmenopausal women. Am J Clin Nutr 2001;73:118-22.

5. Knight EL, Stampfer MJ, Hankinson SE, et al. The impact of protein intake on renal function decline in women with normal renal function or mild insufficiency. Ann Intern Med 2003;138:460-7.

For more on protein follow the protein tag here...

if it's a good enough diet for a 98 year old cardiothoracic surgeon...

It's good enough for us!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FX58PyQwrcI

Click the link to see an interview of Dr. Ellsworth Wareham, a 98 year old recently retired (at age 95) cardiothoracic surgeon; he adopted a plant-based diet in his 50's. He's been a vegan for almost 1/2 his life.

Pasta Primevera

I made this last weekend, from Forks over Knives

It was YUM! Next time, I'm going to make the sauce in a separate pan from the veggies so that I can have sauce for plain noodles.  I have two girls who were leery of eating all the veggies. (Kira and Tia ate the pasta once--I had to pick the veggies out.) I really liked cooking the pepper, broccoli, onion, garlic, and peas together and the flavors worked so well together. Next time, I may or may not use carrots. I may add kale sometime... This recipe can be modified in so many ways and the sauce could be used with so many different veggies and pasta.  Next time, I'll add a little salt; we just sprinkled it on at the end.

To make the sauce separately, I'll add the broth, oat flour, ground cashews, and soy milk to a small pan and cook it first and then pour it over the veggies and pasta.

The recipe took quite a bit of time with all the chopping, but it made quite a bit of food, so it was worth the time!  Nick and I had 3 dinners out of it.  Nat just ate it once.  As I play around with different veggies, I'll let you know what I do to speed up the cooking (including using frozen broccoli).

I'm excited to have a new recipe that I love and that's easy to modify!

(Here's the recipe copy and pasted in case the Forks over Knives site ever takes it down.  Full credit to them and Katelin Mae)

Pasta Primavera
Serves 6

Ingredients:

• 12 ounces quinoa penne
• 3 cups broccoli, chopped
• 2 cups carrots, diced
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 cup red bell pepper, diced
• 1½ tablespoon garlic granules
• 2 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
• ½ cup raw cashews
• 1 cup soy milk
• ½ cup oat flour
• 2 cups green peas
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper
• 2 teaspoons dried basil or 2 tablespoons fresh
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano or 2 tablespoons fresh
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved

Instructions:

In a medium pot, bring water to a boil. Then add the pasta and cook according to the directions on the box. When the pasta is slightly al dente, remove from heat, drain, and set aside. While pasta cooks, in a large sauté pan, sweat (see chef’s note below) the broccoli, carrots, onion, red pepper, and garlic on medium heat for 10 minutes. Keep them covered and stir occasionally. Then stir in the vegetable broth and simmer for another 10 minutes.

Grind the cashews in a spice grinder to form a cashew powder. A coffee grinder or blender would also work. Either way, make sure the appliance is completely dry.

Stir in the soy milk, oat flour and cashew powder. Make sure to stir occasionally to prevent the oats from clumping together. Add the peas, black pepper, and dried herbs. Simmer for 10 minutes, continuing to stir occasionally, until the oats and cashews create a creamy sauce. Mix in the pasta and tomatoes. Best served right away. Also delicious chilled as a pasta salad.

Chef’s Notes:

Sweating is a mix of sautéing and steaming. The idea is the water will come out or “sweat” from the veggies, which creates enough moisture so that no added liquid is needed. To sweat an item, put the cut veggie in a sauté pan without oil or water over medium heat. Keep the pan covered and stir frequently. Do this until the item is cooked to desired frequency. If the pan is becoming dry or veggie starts to stick to the bottom of pan, add a little bit of water or vegetable broth. You can also turn down the heat.

Because you are grinding the cashews and using oat flour, they will be slightly coarse and you will likely see specks of these two within the cream sauce. If this bothers you, you could try substituting a more refined thickening agent, such as store-bought rice flour or potato starch.

If you are using fresh herbs, add them in the last step when you are mixing in the pasta and tomatoes.