Substantial Mix-n-Match Salad
Mango (Passion-less) Sorbet
Mushy Peas
Post-Race Protein Shake
Sticky Rice with Mango
Chocolate-Dipped Things
Baked Polenta Fries
Easy Apple Tarts
Orange-Soy Seitan Tenders with Polish Pimped Mashed Potatoes & red kale
Shamefully Simple Chickpea Chili
Chocolate Popcorn w/cashews
Chocolate Popcorn w/cashews & Abi
Sesame Seed Cookies
Baked Apples
Pimped Mashed Potatoes - Polish Mash
SPIDER CRACKERS
Ritz Crackers with peanut butter inside to hold the 8 pretzel legs. Use a small dab of peanut butter to attach the raisin eyes.
Tailor these to your kids preferences. Another healthy variation is almond butter, cranberries, and Ritz whole wheat crackers.
My kids love making and eating these. A perfect October after school snack!
APPLE DUMPLINGS
1. Core and peel apples, leave an inch of the lower unpeeled.
2. Divide a pie crust for each apple and place the apple on top.
3. Fill the core with a small mixture of raisins, cranberries, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
4. Press and seal the pastry around the apple. Put a dollop of coconut oil on the top.
5. Bake the dumplings @ 375* for about 15 minutes while making the basting sauce.
6. Bring 2 tablespoons Earth Balance, 3/4 C. apple juice, 3/4 C. water, 1/2 C. sugar, & 1/8 tsp. cinnamon to a boil in a small sauce pan. Reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes.
7. Baste the dumplings with the sauce and pour the rest in the pan and continue to bake about 30 minutes until they are tender. Continue to baste the dumplings about every 15 minutes.
Roasted pumpkin seeds are always a treat this time of year! I hope you are enjoying a healthy Halloween season!!
It's Fall, and we felt the calling to go pick apples, so we headed to Emmett, and followed the signs. At first, we thought we were at the same place as last year, but wound up finding another delightful orchard. Wee King's Orchard (2955 W. South Slope Road 398-8047) is an acronym of their 3 children's names and their last. They saw the property online, and sight unseen moved here from Monterey California. They thought it'd be fun to run an orchard, and found that it is, plus lots of hard work. They love it!
Here's their seasonal line-up:
Cherries in June
Apricots in July
30 varieties of Apples Aug/Oct
Empress Plums in September
Italian Prunes during September
Apple break! Picking apples makes you hungry and we were pleased to be lost in the Fuji section.
We also picked up pie pumpkins and ornamental gourds from their produce stand. Our city girls enjoyed running through the orchards, chasing a cat, and exploring their garden as we exchanged stories with the owners. It was a lovely day.
The apples we didn't eat fresh went into this 'German Apple Cake' from The Joy of Vegan Baking. I had four apple recipes in mind from this book and this was a great choice! Art and I ate the entire thing over the next couple days and didn't feel one bit guilty! :)
Hey, anybody going to the upcoming Vegan Holiday Festival in Portland? You could hear Brendan Brazier, or dish it up with Julie Hasson! Among the exhibitors will be Food Fight!, VegNews Mag, & Herbivore. Sounds like an awesome event!
We still have lots of apples from our day of apple picking -- combine that with the fact that I still hadn't christened my Crockpot, and this is what you get. Homemade apple sauce. We sprinkled some dried cranberries on top for some added zing. My kindergarten students loved discovering the star inside apples -- just cut them horizontally. These make pretty prints & are perfect for little hands to hold and stamp. Use some paints and make some homemade cards, wrapping paper, T-shirts, or whatever. I'm hoping to get to some of these activities soon!
Olivia wasn't feeling well, and this was just what the Doctor ordered. It was pleasant to have the aroma of apples all day, and it did wonders to coax ill taste buds.
CROCKPOT APPLE SAUCE
5 Apples - peeled & chopped
1/2 C. Sugar
1 C. Water
Combine all ingredients. Cook on High 4 Hours.
More comfort food! I'm including these spuds because I'm a total potato fiend.
VICKI'S ROASTED POTATOES
Yukon Golds - medium=quartered; small=halves
Whole Garlic Cloves
Olive Oil
Sea Salt
Preheat oven to 400*F. Toss everything in a bowl and transfer to a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Bake for about 40 minutes.
This is a loaf of 'Maple Banana Loaf' from The Everyday Vegan, pg. 167. This was delicious. I used all whole wheat pasty flour because that's all I had (all out of white + spelt, & kamut!) The recipe calls for 1 cup very ripe banana, and that meant 2 bananas for me -- which was exactly what I had on hand. I used vanilla soy milk, and threw in 1/4 cup chocolate chips. Very yummy!
I altered an old recipe by veganizing it and subbing spelt flour. What a success!
MAPLE BAKED APPLES
1/2 C. spelt flour
1/2 C. brown sugar
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
pinch of salt
3 Tbsp. soybean margarine
1/3 C. old-fashioned rolled oats
3 Tbsp. pure maple syrup
9 small Gala apples
1 Preheat oven to 375* F. Lightly grease an 8-inch square glass baking dish.
2 In a bowl, combine flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt. Cut in soybean margarine with 2 knives, fingertips, or pastry blender until mixture is crumbly. Add oats and maple syrup and stir with a fork to blend lightly.
3 Core an apple and cut off stem. Cut 1 inch off bottom of core; replace 1-inch-long piece in bottom of apple to cork it and place apple in prepared dish. Repeat with remaining apples.
4 Fill each apple with flour mixture. Cover pan snugly with foil and bake for 45 minutes. Remove foil and continue baking until apples are tender and filling is lightly browned, about 15 minutes longer. Let cool and then refrigerate until ready to serve.
Know your APPLES
Fujis are firm, crisp and good raw and in applesauce and pie.
Galas have red striping, are sweet and crisp, and taste good raw and cooked.
Granny Smiths are bright green, tart and great raw and cooked in pies.
McIntoshes are softer than others -- great for applesauce.
Red and Golden Delicious are best raw, but Goldens make good pies.
Romes are sweet and medium-large; they hold their shape when baked whole.
More than just walnuts are falling from of our walnut trees. We found this perfect bird nest laying on the lawn. We've since put it in a shoe box, and it sits on our patio. Olivia loved seeing it up close because we've been observing it for a while. We watched the Robins build the nest in the Spring & heard the baby birds singing soon after. It's been fun to see!
It was Art's birthday, and here's a picture of the cake he baked with Olivia. I could hear them having fun working in the kitchen together while Abigail and I played in another room. I should have more details since this is a food blog, but all I can say for sure is that:
1. The house had a wonderful banana aroma while it baked
2. The cake was white
3. The frosting was white
4. There was a layer of fresh banana between layers
5. There aren't enough candles inside a box
6. It was delicious
With all the bananas, it's no wonder Olivia's nickname for Art is Bananas Gorilla. Another of his cooking specialities is pancakes. So for his birthday, we decided it'd be funny if he found this when he reached inside the pantry instead of his trusty, clear, plastic, pancake container. He was surprised, thought it was funny, and likes it very much.
The girls and I also painted two little T-shirts with birthday greetings. They wore them to bed the night before, so in the morning Art was wished Happy Birthday right away. The girls wore their night shirts over their day clothes for the rest of the day, so you can see what they look like below.
"Go pick apples." was Art's response to, "What do you want to do for your birthday?"
So we drove 30 minutes to Tyler's Orchards (S. Slope Road, Emmett). This sign is the first thing we saw after turning on their road -- other than row after row of beautiful, fragrant trees. We put $6 dollars in the "cash cow," grabbed a kitty litter pail, and began wandering between the rows of red delicious apple trees.
The trees here are unusually short, and both girls had no problem reaching the apples.
For us, apple picking is a family thing -- picking apples in the crisp fall air, with the hazy autumn sun glinting through the branches. If you've never done it before, you owe it to yourself to do it. It's one of those old-fashioned romantic fall activities, like hay rides that make you feel like a kid again. And - bonus- you've got a bushel of apples for baking pies, making applesauce, dipping - or for just polishing on your sleeve.
Orchard owner comments that:
*Gala: "Gala is the best early apple for fresh eating."
*Jonathan: "It's the best cooking apple for pies."
*Honey Crisp: "This is the best eating apple, mid-season, if you like a tart, crisp apple,"
*Fuji: "They're not very good for cooking, but they're good for fresh-eating, and you can buy them later in the season."
*Pink Lady: "You can't cook a Pink Lady, but for fresh-eating, this -- and the Fuji -- are good picks and they'll hold up for most of the winter."
I think being surrounded by trees with delicious fruit was the most exciting for Abigail. I'd say fruit is her favorite food category and this was a slice of heaven for her. This is a rare moment when she didn't have an apple in each hand.
There was a produce stand farther up the road near their home. The girls couldn't resist these georgous, giant pumpkins. We also bought some peaches and plums here.
This was our pick of the day -- Red Delicious.
Which is the apple of your eye? Orchard owner picks his favorite apples:
In his opinion, the best fresh-eating are Honey Crisp, Gala, Fuji and Pink Lady.
Top cooking apples, he says, are Jonathan, Rome and Granny Smith.
Ingredients:
2 Fuji Apples - peeled, cored, cut into 1/8 inch thick slices (squeeze lemon juice over exposed apples to prevent browning)
2 Tbsp. Sugar
Agave Nectar
1 Lemon - finely grated zest & juice
4 Tbsp. Apricot Preserves
1 Tsp. Vanilla Soy Milk
Vegan Puff Pastry Squares
Method:
Preheat oven to 450*. Press puff pastry into individual containers. Combine apple slices, 1 Tbsp. sugar, zest from lemon, and several squeezes of agave nectar. Spread preserves over the crust (I used Organic Apricot Lavender Leaf preserves). Arrange apple slices in concentric circles atop preserves, overlapping. Try to build up a pretty edge for the crust, brush it with soy milk, & sprinkle with remaining sugar.
Bake 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350*, cover crust with tinfoil and cook for 15 more minutes. Reduce heat again to 325*, cover entirely with tinfoil and cook 15 more minutes. Let cool.
Art & I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary this week, so I made 2 individual sized Heart Tarts. If you plan to use a regular tart pan, double the recipe.
This is for Urban Vegan's clever tART contest.
