September 30, 2009
· Filed under bread, cookbooks, cookies, waste not want not
The bread is rising as I speak– no, write. I was having what Kim and I call a banana emergency. I don’t know how I missed the cardamom pods and malt extract in Nicola Graimes’ recipe. I wouldn’t know where to shop for them anyway so substituted agave nectar and allspice. We will see how that goes. It is not a sweet bread. It has disturbingly little sugar. These darn vegans, never enough sugar or salt. I am hoping it will be good for toasting for breakfast. Is there a bad homemade bread?
The cookies are from Veganomicon, Fig Smushed Almond Anise. My friend Kim Russert makes and decorates borracho cookies at the holidays, with rum-soaked anise seeds. They are a lot like shortbread, deceptively plain, and frankly it is not possible to stop eating them until they are gone. I attempted them and they just weren’t as good. So every so often I attempt something with anise in hopes of duplicating the can’t stop eating thing. I had almonds I needed to use… short of simply flying across country to make them with her, this is the best I can do.
I will let you know how it goes.
September 19, 2009
· Filed under breakfast, cookbooks, easy, family meals, kid pleaser, waste not want not
I’ve been travelling. Today is the first day I have cooked breakfast for my family in a long, long time.
I had not tried Isa Chandra Moskowitz’ Fronch Toast from my beloved, beat up, stained copy of Vegan with a Vengeance. My kids and husband pronounced it a success. Well, my six year old just ate it, after swearing she did not want it. That is a success, right?
You can use baguette as called for but I just used some stale bread. I don’t think the bread was vegan but waste not, want not, right? My husband bought it before I got here (details on here in another post, gotta run to the pirate festival in Ojai). I love using up things instead of throwing them away. I put it in a 300 degree oven while I was putting together the other ingredients to make it nice and dry. I doubled her recipe.
Weird ingredients needed are soy creamer and chick pea flour. Silk makes soy creamer but my dad says to boycott them because they are a subsidiary of a dairy company with cruel confinement practices. I bought it anyway, til I find a better resource. Trader Joe’s makes it too. I found chick pea flour at Henry’s farm market, but it is available lots of places. So is maple syrup but I got it cheap at Trader Joe’s.
Yummy yum!
