Pumpkin Spice Granola

 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. 

Adzuki Red Pepper Bean Dip

Amidst the stresses of keeping up my grades and deciding what college I am going to next year, I am somehow finding time to make various odds and ends to keep me going through the week. Cafeteria food is obviously not an option, so even when I'm really busy, I still need to find time to cook a bit. I don't mind this at all, however. I love to cook, and it definately relaxes me. I love nothing more than being in the kitchen, combining new flavors and ingredients, and seeing what I get.

I'm always needing quick little servings of dips to bring in containers and eat with veggies or crackers. I have been making a lot of nut based dips, but despite the fact that I soak them and ferment them a little bit they still feel too heavy for me sometimes. And I've also been craving more cooked, comfort foods lately, so that's what I've been making.

I have a pretty large amount of beans in bulk sitting at the bottom of my pantry that are rarely used, so I decided to pull a couple out and soak them for the day and make a dip from scratch. Hummus would have been easy, but I like very garlicky hummus and I don't like bringing garlicky things to school because they are always recieved by my peers with wrinkled noses and skeptical comments. So I was going for a dip that was well seasoned but not stinky. It turned out to have an indian food undertone, due to the spices I happened to choose. It's not very strong and could be a bit more salty, but I'm really not a salt person, so add more if you'd prefer. If you do happen to have a nut cheese on hand, such as a tangy cashew-sunflower seed-red pepper cheese, it would go wonderfully as a layered dip for veggies or crackers, or slathered on some bread with green for a nice sandwich.

The choice of beans really doesn't matter. You could use whatever you wanted, the adzuki and white beans are just the ones that interested me.

Adzuki Bean Dip

3/4 cup dried adzuki beans
3/4 cup dried white beans
1 slightly heaping tsp dulse flakes*
1/2 tsp tumeric
1 tbls olive oil
1 red pepper
1 tbls tahini
1/3 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1/3 tsp smoked paprika
dash of ground mustard seed
dash of black pepper

*Dulse is a seaweed, and you can buy it whole or in flake form. The flakes are nice because they require no soaking- you can sprinkle them on salads or add them into recipes as is.
1) Soak the beans for eight hours, or over night.
2) Drain the beans and cook them in water for 45minutes-1hour, or when they are soft. When you cook them, add the dulse and half of the tumeric, for digestion.
3) Slice the red pepper into strips and broil it for about 20 minutes (I did this in the toaster oven). You can broil it for longer, but I decided to stop here because I wasn't going for the totally cooked kind that you find in a jar.
4) Put all of the beans in a food processor and mix. Add the olive oil and tahini and mix some more. Add the red pepper, mix. If your processor has a hard time processing the red pepper as mine did, just take half of the beans and pepper mixture out and process the smaller batch, then slowly add more and more and continue processing. Add the rest of the spices, mix, taste, add some more, mix, taste, and enjoy!

It doesn't look like the prettiest thing, but it tastes good!

Also, if you are interested in the tangy cashew-sunflower seed-red pepper cheese, I don't have measurements, because it was the result of a dressing for kale chips that I did not have enough kale for, and a lot of it was adding and adding until I got something I liked. But here is the rough layout:

Sunflower seed cheese

1/2 cup cashews
3/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 red pepper
smoked paprika
chili powder
juice of 1 lemon
sea salt
2 tsp nutritional yeast
1 probiotic capsule

1) Soak the cashews and sunflower seeds overnight.
2) Blend them in the food processor, then add the pepper, lemon juice, nut yeast and spices, and blend some more.
3) Open the probiotic capsule and try not to spill it all over yourself in the process.
4) Pour in the contents and mix everything really well.
5) Put it on a cheese cloth on top of a small bowl, like the herbed cashew cheese, and put it in the dehydrator at 110 degrees overnight (or just let it sit out in a warm spot). Turn off the dehydrator the next morning and forget to take it out until that night, and you will have yourself some tangy fermented cheese!

Microgreens: Buckwheat!

I've been growing and eating sprouts for a while. When I say a while I mean no more than two years, (I'm an eighteen year old, we think six months relationships are "long term") but nonetheless I've grown them enough to be familiar with them. Different flavors, textures, which are better cooked, better raw, which should never have been sprouted in the first place.

I go off and on sprout kicks, generally just motivated by what I'm craving. Lately I've been craving lots of raw, unadulterated foods. What can I say? They make me feel good. And they're much better of my sensitive digestive system than ToFurky or some gluttonous pasta. Enter buckwheat, which really just wanted to be granola. My work didn't have any hulled buckwheat groats, (the kind that doesn't have the hard, indigestible outershell) So I opted for the unhulled buckwheat, assuming that just like alfalfa, the hull would fall off during the sprouting process. Let me tell you, buckwheat is NOT like alfalfa. You think I would have done my research via SproutPeople, but I didn't. Turns out, unhulled buckwheat is used strictly for buckwheat lettuce, which is grown via growing trays, quite similarly to how wheatgrass is grown. That is , you sprout the grain in a jar, and then put the sprouts in soil and water them and they grow. So I had this buckwheat sprouting in a jar, still in its indigestible hulls, while the growing trays I ordered for my future wheatgrass was still in the mail. What's a girl to do? I put the buckwheat in the fridge, hoping it wouldn't die, and patiently waited until my trays came. When they did, I planted them, and hoped for the best. What a happy accident!

After two or three days. The little guys are popping up!

Right before the slaughter. They look like clover and have a subtle lemony taste.

So now I have a big bag of buckwheat lettuce sitting in my fridge, with a second crop (from the same tray) almost ready. They grow really fast, and they're a very inexpensive way to get some organic greens!

After this I'm going to be trying wheatgrass, which was the initial reason for buying the trays.

I've also tried making raw wheat bread, but (surprise) it has a very raw taste to it. Which is not necessarily what I'm going for. I love my Ezekiel bread, but it'd be nice to find something homemade that's less expensive and just as, if not more nutritionally satisfying. The batch I made was very standard: sprouted wheat berries, ground flax, sea salt, raw honey. I'll be experimenting with a cinnamon-raisin bread and an herbed bread. But for now, enjoy the greens!

Herbed Raw Cashew "Cheese"

It looks like we may be having our second major snow storm of the new year, which may mean two consecutive weeks of multiple snow days. I really can't complain. I don't really mind all of the shoveling, and the set back of graduating a couple days later to make up for the lost days doesn't really bother me. I probably should be using the extra days off to get more studying done, May will be here before I know it, laughing at me as I sit in a room for 4 hours taking AP tests, while she's shining her sun and warming the earth. But instead of studying, what do I do? I take time to prepare food I wouldn't have time to make during the school day. I think up little snacks that I would love to have. (Like the one I thought of today during Philosophy class: chocolate cashew butter. It would be sooo easy. And so good.) Sundays are also spent making foods for me to eat during the week. Dips and pates are the easiest, because I love munching on veggies during the day and salads aren't very ideal to be taken out in the middle of class. Some celery, or peppers, with a nice nut or bean dip, and no one even notices.

I've been experimenting with nut "cheeses" a bit lately, trying to ferment them to get that tangy cheese taste. The fermenting hasn't been too successful. I'm going to try adding more miso, and if that doesn't work then just breaking open a probiotic and adding that. So the cheese I made is not notably tangy, but it is still very good. The consistency is very smooth, and the olive oil-rosemary combination gives it a creamy herby flavor.

If you left this out for say, a couple days, it may legitimately ferment, but to be honest I wanted some good dip, and I didn't feel like waiting.



Herbed Raw Cashew "Cheese"

2 cups raw cashews
1 cup raw walnuts
1 tbls extra virgin olive oil
3/4 tsp thyme
1 tsp rosemary
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp miso paste

1.) Soak cashews and walnuts for at least 2 hours, or over night.
2.) Drain nuts. Puree them in your food processor until crumbly.
3.) Add the rest of the ingredients and blend until the mixture is very smooth, like a creamy nut butter.
4.) Put a cheesecloth over a small bowl, and then put the cheese mixture on top of the cheesecloth. Then put plastic wrap over the cheese mixture to keep it from drying out. I used a rubber band to hold the cheese cloth onto the bowl like a cover. The weight from the nut cheese will sink it down a bit.
5.) Let the "cheese" sit like this for 24 hours (or more) in a warm place.
6.) Put the cheese on a plate and enjoy with veggies, chips, crackers, in sandwiches, or whatever else suits you.



On cheesecloth, covered with plastic wrap.


Being enjoyed with Mom's homemade brown rice crackers.

Rawish Chocolate. Kind of.

Most teenagers go to the mall and go on shopping sprees. I go shopping at work (a natural foods store) and to the occasional Whole Foods, where I generally buy things that I don't need with money that I shouldn't be spending. For example, the excessive amount of chapsticks that I bought on my most recent visit. Hey, it's the winter, okay? We all need a little bit extra chapstick. I also had to buy the burdock root I found, even though I have no idea how to consume it. Do I make tea? Would I have to dry it first? Can I just pan fry it and eat it? Who knows. I'll find out eventually, I promise. Maybe I'll post it. A few other first time purchases were cacao beans and maca powder. You can never get enough super foods. And while I don't have any cocoa butter, I do have a 3.5 lb tub of coconut oil, which I can probably sub in while I experiment with a rawish cacao bar, which I don't think I can accurately call chocolate because of the lack of cocoa butter. It doesn't taste like the Green & Blacks chocolate I buy when I have a craving, but then again it is primarily raw, so I wouldn't expect it to. It was my first try, but I would definately make this again. And it would be a great base if I wanted to add anything extra. Cacao bar with goji berries, anyone? This is what I think about instead of paying attention in calc class.

Cacao Bars
makes 16 little squares

1/2 cup raw cashews
3/4 cup ground cacao beans
3 tbls maca powder
3 tbls raw honey
2 tbls coconut oil
1 tbls cocoa powder

1.) Grind cacao beans in a coffee grinder so that you have 3/4 cup of powder (you could of course just use raw cacao powder, but why be simple?)
2.) Put all of the ingredients in a food processor and mix until the cashews are just little specks of white.
3.) Taste. Add more honey, oil or cacao if desired.
4.) Put mixture into pan and press down until the mass is very thin, like a chocolate bar. I would recommend using a smaller pan so that the edges of the pan shape the sides of the mass and you don't just have a giant blob. Unless you want a giant blob.
5.) Put in freezer for about 15 minutes, then take out and cut into 16 squares. Store in fridge and enjoy!

Chocolate Coffee Protein Bars

But, where do you get your protein? The universal question of non-vegans/vegetarians. I get plenty of protein from nuts, seeds, grains, veggies, of course. But I've been experimenting with hemp protein powder lately, and while I wouldn't consider it a "whole food" it seems to be much less processed than the regular isolated proteins, *cough* soy.

So here's a take on some awesome bars that I've tried at work, but can't afford to be spending my money on all of the time!

Chocolate Coffee Protein Bars
makes 12 bars

1 cup almond butter
1/2 cup of raw honey and agave, in any ratio you'd like
1 cup hemp protein powder (I used Bob's Red Mill)
1/4 cup unsweetened chocolate
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup VERY strong coffee

1.) Put all of the ingredients in the food processor and mix well.
2.) Flatten mixture into a pan for desired thickness.
3.) Chill in fridge for about 20 minutes, and then cut into bars.
4.) Store in fridge.

I like to wrap mine individually in foil so that I can just grab them for a snack at school.

These are uber tasty, but very rich and satisfying. Enjoy!

Pre-Packaging


Individually wrapped!

Pumpkin Butter!

A friend's mom gave me a little jar of pumpkin butter, which was awesome. I reinvented the "butter and jelly on toast" combination with toasted Ezekiel bread, coconut butter, and pumpkin butter.


However the jar being little, it didn't last too long. The ingredients were pumpkin, sugar, and citric/ascorbic acid. I made it with agave and a little bit of maple syrup, which rounds out the simple sweet flavor. I would recommend using canned pumpkin for this recipe as opposed to home-baked pumpkin, because the canned pumpkin is so finely pureed. The batch that I made is definitely not as sweet as the store bought jar, but that's fine for my preference.

Homemade Pumpkin Butter

1 1/2 cups pureed pumpkin
6 tbls agave
2 tbls maple syrup

Whisk together, and enjoy. The desired sweetness level is of course, up to you. If you have a sweet tooth you may want to add more agave. If you don't, you may want to cut back, say to 4 tbls agave.

Kale Chips

Ah, fresh veggies. Ripe, in-season fruit. Long, warm days- Oh wait, it's winter. Everything is cold and dead. And the worst is yet to come. I'm a very optimistic person, can't you tell? Despite the cold, i'm still trying to get in the fruits and veggies that make me feel so good. Room temperature smoothies have been keeping me going through the school day, but these conspicuous green concoctions in translucent red nalgene bottles aren't quite enough. I like solid food sometimes too, you know?

More Granola! And...Salad

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.

Granola in More Than One Way

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. 

Almond Walnut Biscotti

Another treat that my mom has been making for years is biscotti. A couple of weeks ago, she was making some to send to my sister, and I decided to make my "alternative" version so that I didn't miss out on the sweets. Let these sit in the oven for a bit after the second bake if you want them to be extra dry and crunchy!

Vegan Walnut Almond Biscotti

2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup margarine
1 cup organic sugar
Equilavent of 2 eggs (when veganizing traditional recipes, I generally go with the Ener-G)
Zest from 1 orange and 1 lemon
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 1/2 cups walnuts, toasted and chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease cookie sheet
Dough: beat sugar and margarine, and then add egg replacer mixture and beat for a couple of minutes. Add orange and lemon zest and extracts. Fold in dry ingredients and nuts, be careful not to overmix.
To shape and bake logs: Shape dough into flattish log approximately 3 inches wide and a length that fits the sheet. Bake for about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool completely.
To cut and bake biscotti: Cut using bread knife, about 3/4 inch wide pieces. Lay cookies on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, turning over half way through. Remove from oven, cool.

Pumpkin Pie

My mother is an incredible self-taught cook. Mostly I think because she has no fear in the kitchen. She has made fondant, and then found reasons to make the cake. She has made numerous types of pasta, and is almost through the 50lb bad of semolina flour that has been sitting in the pantry for the past several months. A deciding factor when order at restaurants was always whether Mom could make it better at home. (Tiramisu, although probably one of my favorite desserts, was never ordered out.)

One dessert that she has mastered above everyone else's is pumpkin pie. Seriously, her pumpkin pie cannot be beaten. The recipe she uses is written on a 3x5 card that is probably older than me, and is so worn that the blue ink is starting to fade. Last year, I attempted my own vegan pumpkin pie, using silken tofu. I generally don't mind the taste of tofu, and sometimes like it. But it just did not work in this situation. Pumpkin + Tofu = strangely creamy unappealing flavor. And Mom's awesome not vegan pumpkin pie was sitting right next to it. Guess who cheated?...