May Vegan Food Box Swap

This month for the vegan food box swap, I was matched up to receive a box from Stephanie at Just Believe. She sent me a fabulous box! Thank you!

I sent a box to Sarah at She Decidedly Wore Pants When Others Did Not (fabulous name for a blog, BTW).



Stephanie sent me the following goodies:
Dates - which I am turning into homemade Lara bars soon
Coconut water
Coconut oil
Spicy Pumpkin seeds
Two packets of green powder - I'm going to try adding these to a smoothie
Justin's almond butter
Two coconut Lara bars
and a handwritten note

Notes
I'm glad that she sent me so much coconut stuff, I love the smell and taste of it. This was a great box.

If you want to get in on the fun, go over to read the rules and sign up at The Verdant Life blog.

I'm going to sit out the next few months of the food box swap because I am going to be travelling here and there for work over the next few months.

Cooking for my parents

Last week I was in Colorado for a conference. The weekend before the conference, I spent a few days seeing my sister and her family, my aunt, uncle, cousin, and my parents. It was good to see everyone!

I made a couple of things for my parents during my brief visit.


My dad had some vital wheat gluten and nutritional yeast. So I decided to make vegan sausages.


Look at all the cast iron! I am super duper jealous.


This was the best way I could come up with to steam them.


What my mom was doing while I was cooking. Making a quilt for my nephew!


Chickpea gluten sausage, broccoli and carrots, and brown rice.


My mom and I were chatting and she started looking through my food blog when she came across the recipe for the Bubble Up Pizza Bites. She made some dough in her bread machine and then we rolled out pieces and filled them with tomato sauce, olives, and mushrooms. She put cheese on half of them. We rolled the toppings so that the dough was completely enclosing them. I think it works better that way, even though it is no longer "bubbling up". Pretty tasty!


My parents had two bananas reaching the end of its life. I decided to make some banana bread with it before I left. I used the recipe from here and it came out a bit dry, but it was still tasty. I did not use the sesame seeds on top, although they sound really good.

Notes
Lately, my seitan has not been coming out super duper well. It is slimy and not well formed. I'm not sure what changed in my seitan skillz, but they are lacking now. My parents were nice enough to eat the seitan and say that it tasted good. Also, since we have gotten the rice cooker, I have a hard time making rice on the stove top, this came out a bit gloopy. Not my finest culinary moment.

Vegan Food Box Swap

This month I participated in a Vegan food box swap through The Verdant Life. You can go to that link to get all the information about how to sign up and start sending and receiving a vegan food box

I sent a box to Ashley at Season of the Vegan.



I received my box from Sarah at Gazing In. She sent me:
Sing Buri Cashews - I hadn't tried these before and I loved them. I ate them for a snack in my office and when I was travelling this past week. I am going to look to see if I can find them locally and if there are other flavours. Amazing.

Homemade cashew butter - I haven't tried this yet. I was travelling last week, I plan on having it on my toast tomorrow. I'm sure it is amazing and she even sent the recipe along in the box.

Trader Joe's Chocolate bar - Hmm, I do love all things Trader Joe's and this does not disappoint.

Dried plums - these are sitting right next to me on my desk. I love that they are small.

Orchard Bar in blueberry, pomegranate, and almond - Oh my goodness, this was delicious. I had not seen these bars before and I will be buying many more. It was the right amount of sweetness, the texture was great, and it was really great combination of flavours. I am a big fan.

Notes
Thank you Sarah for sending me a box! I'm looking forward to participating again next month!

Grillin'

Today I was looking through Pinterest (see my boards here) and I saw a recipe for Grilled Mint Julep Peaches. I do love a good grilled peach and we had a few ending the near of their life from our produce delivery as well as bourbon, mint, and sugar, so we put together a grilling fest.



The recipe for the grilled mint julep peaches is located here. We had four small peaches, so I cut the glaze down by half and still had a lot left over. I tried to turn it into a drink with ginger beer, but it was waaayy too sugary. Over the peaches, the glaze was fabulous.

We also grilled apple-sage field roast sausages, a pear, and beet slices. The beet slices were still super hard by the time they came off the grill. Next time I would probably par-cook them by boiling in water or softening in the microwave oven before putting them on the grill. When we cut the beet into spears, it was tender enough to eat with the salad.

Here is our grill set up.




We have a charcoal grill, but instead of going through the hassle of setting it up and waiting for the coals to get hot, we used my husbands burner he usually uses for beer brewing. He put our cast iron grill pan on top of it and it got hot really really quickly.

Notes
We both enjoyed this meal a lot. The sausages are always good, the peaches were excellent, the pear was a pleasant surprise, and the beets were very tasty. A win!

Bunny bread

My husband and I have birthdays 1 day apart, so we tend to hold some sort of birthday event to celebrate. Last year we went bowling with a group of people and this year we held a cocktail party. It was a bit ridiculous - a keg of Manhattans, a pitcher of moijtos, and dark and stormies. We had people over from school as well as the pub we frequent. It was a great mix of people. The star of show, though, was this bread bunny.

I saw a link to a recipe on Pintrest and decided that I had to make it. I halved the recipe, mostly because my oven is small and I can't fit a large cookie sheet in it. When we obtain a bigger oven, I will be making a full size one.



Ingredients
(for the smaller size)
1 lb bread dough (I used the recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking for the foccacia. I had to add about 1/2 cup more water, otherwise that recipe is topnotch.)
Eye looking things (The recipe calls for raisins and I didn't have anything, so I used peppercorns)
Teeth looking things (Recipe says slivered almonds and again I had just run out, I used a raw cashew)

dip for the belly (I used a spinach dip - 8 oz vegan cream cheese, 4 oz frozen spinach, sriracha cooked in the slow cooker until hot and delicious).
crudités

Method
Look on the Taste of Home website for instructions. I did not do any sort of egg wash before baking.


Notes
Everyone loved the dip and bread. It looks so creepy, but was really tasty.

Sweet Potato Spring Rolls

I was looking through my 200+ food blogs I am subscribed to and found inspiration from Bean Figz and Katz for a lunch my husband and I had this week. They are women after my own heart with their love of sriracha!



Ingredients
1.5 sweet potatoes
cumin
chili powder or chipotle powder
1/2 small cabbage, shredded
1.5 carrots, julienned
sriacha sauce
cilantro
spring roll wrappers
warm water

peanut butter
hot water
sesame oil
sriracha


Method
Begin by peeling and cubing the sweet potatoes. Boil, until tender, about 10 - 15 minutes. Drain and mash with cumin and chili powder to taste along with salt and pepper.

Put a spring roll wrapper in warm water (I usually use a pie pan for the water, it is about the same size as the wrapper) until it is softened. Place the wrapper on a plate lined with paper towels. Add sweet potatoes down the middle and top with some cabbage, carrots, cilantro, and a few squirts of sriracha. Roll up like a burrito. Repeat with the remaining spring roll wrappers until the sweet potatoes are gone.

For the peanut sauce: in a bowl combine 1 - 2 spoonfuls of peanut butter. Add 1 t of sesame oil with a couple of squirts of sriracha. Add a few tablespoons of hot water until the peanut butter mixture can be mixed easily. Stir until combined. Eat with spring rolls.


Notes
Both of us loved the spring rolls with the peanut sauce! Unfortunately, there was not enough food in this lunchbox to sustain us all day, but it was really good. We were both starving when we were going home. Hmm, I need to pack more food.

Also included was carrot sticks, kiwi fruit, pear, and blueberries.

Vegan Food Box Swap?

In my last post, I talked about a general food box swap in which I participated. Now someone has put together a food box swap exclusively for vegan food. If you would like to participate you can sign up over on The Verdant Life blog.

Foodie Box!

This month I signed up on The Lean Green Bean to send and receive a foodie box. Basically, you sign up and are given a name and someone gets yours. You exchange addresses and food preferences/allergies/etc and then send a box worth of $15 snack foods to your person. It was a lot of fun.

If you want to see what I sent in my box head over to the Almondjay food blog. I'm glad she liked what I picked for her!



I received my box from Maureen at Organically Mo and she loaded me up with Trader Joe's snacks! I really miss Trader Joe's and I could not have been happier to see all the food in my box.

- Orange muscat champagne vinegar (this was delicious on a pasta salad I made the other day!)
- Dark chocolate nibs (I have been putting these in my dessert portion of my PlanetBox all week)
- Almonds
- Banana Chips
- Dried mango (my husband ate almost all of these himself!)
- Smoked sea salt (Oh my goodness, this is amazing.)
- Chocolate Almond Butter
- Chocolate Hazelnut Butter (Dairy free Nutella! This was great on toast as well as my celery sticks)

Thank you for the box, Maureen. It was so much fun to receive a food box in the mail!

If you would like to sign up to be apart of Foodie Pen Pals next month, follow the directions below. I highly recommend it!

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-On the 5th of every month, you will receive your penpal pairing via email. It will be your responsibility to contact your penpal and get their mailing address and any other information you might need like allergies or dietary restrictions.
-You will have until the 15th of the month to put your box of goodies in the mail. On the last day of the month, you will post about the goodies you received from your penpal!
-The boxes are to be filled with fun foodie things, local food items or even homemade treats! The spending limit is $15. The box must also include something written. This can be anything from a note explaining what’s in the box, to a fun recipe…use your imagination!
-You are responsible for figuring out the best way to ship your items depending on their size and how fragile they are. (Don’t forget about flat rate boxes!)
-Foodie Penpals is open to blog readers as well as bloggers. If you’re a reader and you get paired with a blogger, you are to write a short guest post for your penpal to post on their blog about what you received. If two readers are paired together, neither needs to worry about writing a post for that month.
-Foodie Penplas is open to US & Canadian residents. Please note, Canadian Residents will be paired with other Canadians only. We’ve determined things might get too slow and backed up if we’re trying to send foods through customs across the border from US to Canada and vice versa. So, I’m going to keep two separate lists and match US w/ US and Canada w/ Canada!

If you’re interested in participating for April, please CLICK HERE to fill out the participation form and read the terms and conditions. You will also find contact information on that page for the UK branch of Foodie Penpals if you’re a blogger across the pond!

You must submit your information by April 4th as pairings will be emailed on April 5th!
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Tofu Lettuce Wraps

We have been getting lettuce every week with our produce delivery and we needed to have something more than salad. I thought of lettuce wraps! Even trying to eat all the lettuce in our fridge was five heads of lettuce, we gave two to our friend Trevor.

This recipe is very much add what ever you have on hand in the quantities you have.



Ingredients
olive oil
tofu, cubed
fresh ginger, minced or minced ginger paste
garlic, minced
soy sauce
red pepper flakes
sesame oil

large lettuce leafs, cleaned
carrots, julienned
red bell peppers, julienned
green onions, chopped


Method
In a cast pan, heat the olive oil over medium high heat until hot. Add the tofu cubes and cook on each side until browned. Add the ginger and garlic, cook until slightly browned. Add the soy sauce, red pepper flakes, and a splash of sesame oil. Stir to combined and everything is heated through.

On a lettuce leaf, lay out some tofu cubes and any vegetables. Eat up.

Notes
I made this for a lunch for myself this past weekend, but gave my husband a few bites and he liked it. I liked it. I would make it again. I used the amazing tofu that comes from our local hippy store. Seriously, it is the best tofu I have ever tasted.

Dinner Club: Beet Burgers, Curry Fries, Blueberry Cobbler

Tonight we had another dinner club with our friend Trevor. He has mentioned several times that he really enjoys beets, but doesn't eat them enough. When I saw the recipe for beet burgers from the PPK website, I knew I had to make them for him.



The recipe for the beet burgers is from the PPK website. The only deviation I added was about 1 tablespoon of cumin powder. I decided to do the suggested pairing with the baked curry fries, although my curry powder was very sweet and I almost thought I had used cinnamon rather than curry powder on the fries. These were very good, the technique of boiling the potatoes first before baking is involved, but it resulted in a good texture for the fries. I put too many fries on my baking sheet so they did not crisp up enough.

For the cobbler, I looked at the recipe from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker for blueberry cobbler and adapted the following to use up our 1.5 pints of fresh blueberries from our food delivery.

Blueberry Cobbler for the Slow Cooker
Ingredients
1.5 pints fresh blueberries
1/4 cup or less sugar
1 T cornstarch

1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup or less sugar
1/4 cup oil or softened butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Method
In a 3.5 qt slow cooker (you can also use the same amount in a 1.5 qt slow cooker), add the blueberries, sugar, and cornstarch. Mix to coat. In a bowl mix the oats, sugar, oil, and cinnamon. Spread over the top of the blueberries. Cook on high for about 1.5 hours or until the top is crispy. Serve with Coconut Bliss Ice Cream.




Notes
Everyone agreed, this was one of the best things we have eaten in a while. My husband and Trevor both eat meat and they were very pleased with the tastiness of the patty. I had my husband eat some of the patty dough before he cooked it up and he said that not only does it look like meat, it tasted a bit like ground beef as well. So very tasty. The cobbler was good as well, but the real star was the beet burger.