I love local, seasonal, and wholesome food. I also love to share my cooking experiences with people. So stop by, relax, and take a moment to smell the baking bread.
Pumpkin and its respective spices are so warming. They make me feel like putting on slippers and big sweaters and drinking hot chocolate and pretending I'm still living on the East Coast, waiting for the first snow fall. In reality, I'm living on California's beautiful central coast, completely enjoying the fact that I still wear short sleeves in November. And the only time of year that I actually miss living back east is Fall, when the leaves are golden and red and the air smells fresh and crisp.
So, what do I do? I bake. A lot. I make biscuits and pumpkin pie. And I bake granola. With pumpkin. Thanksgiving may be over, but the season of putting pumpkin in every single thing I bake isn't.
I know, I know, who wants to hear about salad on a vegan blog? Chances are your friends think that salad is all you eat, topped with alfalfa sprouts and beans. (Although that doesn't sound half bad as a base...) But we're not trying to keep the stereotype alive here. However I have a pretty solid salad dressing recipe that I've been using a lot lately, so I just thought I'd share it. It's a spin off of my mom's balsamic dressing recipe, which is olive oil, balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard, and herbs. I use miso in place of dijon, because they both have that unique salty taste. I've been on a fermented foods kick for a while, so I'm finding every possible way to get some miso in my diet.
I have recieved the "But what do you eat?" question from an unfathomably large number of people, as I'm sure most people of restrictive diets have. Vegan, paleo, macro, raw, etc. Just eliminate all animal products, I eat everything else. They're usually still baffled. There's also the endless number of "vegan jokes" which have become just as funny to me as to my friends who make them. I could do a whole monologue. "Hello, i'm Natalie and I'm a veGAN.(Prounced vay-gahn.) I eat leaves and twigs that I generally collect on my nature runs through Tyler Park. Does your pet rabbit eat alfalfa? So do I! Let me know if he wants to come over for a lunch date. I know I could have just brought a peanut butter and jelly for lunch but tree bark seemed so much more appetizing, especially spread with dirt. If you have any SunChips bags to compost, give them to me, but don't be surprised if I sneak them for an afternoon snack, being biodegradable and all.
I like to think I add a lot of comic relief to an otherwise mundane school day.
