Pancakes Galore!

As the title suggests, I may have gone a little overboard with the pancakes this weekend.  As I am a little later to work than I would like and this is my 4th? post this morning, I think I will keep this short and sweet.  Base recipe: Vegan with a Vengeance.

Extra Cinnamon

Cocoa Powder (though, not really enough)

Peppermint Extract

2nd half of peppermint extract with cocoa powder.  Nom.  These were the best.

Vegan Pizza Rolls and Other Stuffed Pastries

So, can you tell I cooked up a storm this weekend?  It was strange because it was almost all hearty an hardly any sweet.  Here is my attempt at vegan pizza rolls.  I decided to switch up my dough recipe and use the one from Vegan with a Vengeance.  I also decided that as long as I was making dough with stuffings, I might as well attempt a hot pocket like creation as well.  So I gathered up my pizza ingredients, some tofu stir-fry with chard and mushrooms and some broccoli and cauliflower.

 I was going to do the broccoli cauliflower with some mushroom soup except that once I opened the soup and looked at the can I realized that it had cream in it.  I am not sure when I bought that soup but I really need to pay more attention to these things when I am in the store.  I also bought some soy cheese on Saturday only to get home and realize it had casein in it.  Since my boyfriend hates fake cheese it was either drive all the way back to the store to return it, toss it or suck it up and eat it.  I settled for the latter.  I just couldn't justify throwing it away when it cost $4!  And since I had nothing else to put in the broccoli cauliflower hot pockets, I tossed that in there.  Teach me to read labels... >(

The rolls turned out mostly great.  The dough got a little thin and started tearing and so toward the end I just started making them a little bigger and thicker.  Also, I cooked them on a pizza stone and since it was in the oven preheating I decided to just line the rolls up on the stove as I filled them.  This seemed to work great until I went to put them in the oven and realized the first ones had started to melt and stick to the stove.  Oi!

Not too shabby, but I see some definite improvements to be made.

I had made a second batch of dough thinking that I would make some more non vegan rolls for my boyfriend, but by the time I got to this point I was exhausted.  I decided to just use the second batch of dough for 2 pizzas.   I rolled out the dough for my boyfriends and topped it with mozzarella and vegan pepperoni.  When I went to transfer it to the pizza stone, it wouldn't budge.  After much lifting and a little tearing I decided to just say f it and flipped it in half and made a calzone.  Mostly it worked just fine.
By this time, I was done, but I still had my pizza to make.  So I decided on a calzone for me as well and stuffed my dough with tomato sauce, vegan mozzarella and broccoli and cauliflower.  I have yet to try it and it is currently residing in my freezer.  I will most likely take a picture when I eat it.  Meanwhile, here is the non vegan one.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls

Ever year for as long as I can remember, my mom has made peanut butter balls, toffee and peanut brittle to give as gifts for Christmas.  A couple of years ago she taught me how to make them and I began to carry on the tradition.  I don't really have a yearning to continue on with toffee and peanut brittle as they really contain a whole lot of sugar along with high temperatures I am not so comfortable with.  But peanut butter balls?  That's a whole different story.   Sometime this last year I had made some pb granola bars for my boyfriend but had been out of chocolate chips at the time.  I decided to remedy this by dipping the granola bars in melted chocolate at a later time.  I then discovered that any time I have melted chocolate is a good time to make peanut butter balls.

The recipe for peanut butter balls only contains a few ingredients.  My mom uses skippy peanut butter, rice crispies, powdered sugar and butter with a coating of melted chocolate and paraffin wax.  I follow her recipe but replace the skippy with some all natural (non-hydrogenated) peanut butter and some crisp brown rice rather than rice crispies which I haven't read the ingredients on in so long, but I am pretty sure would have high fructose corns syrup.  And of course I used vegan butter.

Peanut butter balls are pretty easy.

1 lb powdered sugar
3 cups crisp rice
2 cups peanut butter (crunchy or smooth)
1/2 cup vegan butter (I used earth balance)

Add all ingredients to a bowl and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon.
Take a small spoonful and roll it into a ball.
Place on a wax paper lined cookie sheet.
Repeat until they are all rolled.

Melt 12 oz of chocolate along with 1/4 bar of paraffin wax and dip each ball.
Place on wax paper.  Repeat and then put the cookie sheet in the fridge to harden.

I didn't use enough paraffin wax this time and so mine have a tendency to melt in your hand.  I need to do some research though on what goes into paraffin wax...scary thought just entered my head that it might not be vegan.

Bagel Bites and Pizza Rolls

Before we started dating, my boyfriends breakfast consisted regularly of chicken nuggets, bbq hot pockets, pizza rolls and bagel bites.  Being the health conscience person that I was, I advised him about the millions of unnatural ingredients that find their way into those products and to my great joy, he stopped eating them.  In general I do not have much of a problem with those foods, just the ingredients in them.  This led me to create some vegan bagel bites a while back.  They were quite a hit and so I decided to make them again this weekend along with an attempt at pizza rolls based on this site.












I am not very pro at dough yet as it seems to never quite get stretchy correctly, but I am always down to try even if it ends in doughy tears.  Just kidding.  But not really.  For the love of my boyfriend who is mostly vegan except for his love of cheese and his once in a while pepperoni pizza or chicken when we go out, I made both the pizza rolls and the bagel bites with real mozzarella cheese and vegan pepperoni.  I do not have a spot in my kitchen to roll out the dough that is large enough,  so I used my glass top stove.  This would have been a good idea if the stove didn't get hot when I preheat the oven.












Overall, the recipe "worked".  I couldn't roll out the dough thin enough and keep it from falling apart when I wrapped it around the tomato sauce, cheese and pepperoni and this resulted in a thicker bread than it should have been.  They also did not have anywhere near enough fillings.  Regardless, it was a good place to start and I made a second attempt a day later with vegan cheese for myself which will be shown in another post.

The bagel bites started out as 20 mini whole wheat bagels.  I spread them with tomato sauce, mozzarella and vegan pepperoni.  I didn't make any of these for myself with vegan cheese, not because I really didn't want any, but more for the reason that I didn't really want to have to differentiate in my freezer which ones were vegan and which ones were not.   And plus, I was going to make the pizza rolls and that's plenty of pizzayness for me.  I also saved 2 bagels because I had bought some tofutti cream cheese to try.  Stay tuned for what I do with that for breakfast this morning.

"Chicken" Nuggets

 When I decided to go vegan I had no real love for fake anything.  I wanted to center my diet around all things fresh and natural and from the ground rather than simply excluding meat and dairy.  However, reading so many food blogs along with stumbling the internet and a love of creating in the kitchen does lead me to attempting these mock meats just to see if I can.  And if it turns out I quite like them?  As long as they freeze well so I can eat them in moderation, I'm down.  These nuggets?  They definitely fit the bill.  They come from this page and are mostly made up of vital wheat gluten and flour.  I was shocked at how yummy they are (especially wrapped in lettuce with a little mustard.  nom).  They freeze well and cook up in the microwave in about a minute.  The recipe made15 but I think I could either make them a little smaller or make them into chicken patties for sammiches.  My boyfriend thinks I should do some experimenting and try to recreate some of his favorite orange chicken from Sipz.  He also suggested some bbq experiments.  I am down as long as I serve them with some fresh salad as well. 

Chocolate Waffles

I am not the biggest fan of waffles and pancakes for breakfast, simply because a bunch of cooked flour covered in maple syrup doesn't really sound like the most nutritious way to start the day.  That doesn't mean I don't like making them or enjoy eating them but it does incline me to come up with more creative toppings than just syrup.

A few months ago I got this waffle maker at a garage sale for $1!  It was a little dirty but I cleaned it up and it works wonderfully.

Since I got it I usually end up making either pancakes or waffles once a weekend.  Today I was searching the internet for the perfect recipe and decided to make these chocolate waffles.  I know what you're thinking, chocolate for breakfast?  This girl's sweet tooth is out of control!  But when you really break it down, chocolate is not a sweet in and of itself, it is the sugar added to chocolate that gives it its bad rap.  This recipe only called for a TBS of sugar for which I used agave.  Dark chocolate is supposed to be good for you anyway, remember?

Once I had decided on chocolate waffles the only logical topping after last night's dinner was raspberries.















I was a little disappointed because the waffles didn't come out quite as chocolaty as I thought they would.  I think next time I might up the chocolate content.  The raspberries definitely overpowered the chocolate, but it was still good.   Unfortunately this breakfast really didn't do all that much towards filling me up.  I am thinking I might go see what kind of fruits I have in the freezer to whip up a green smoothie.

I'll keep you updated.  :-)

Feeling Fruity

Here is what a green smoothie looks like at 6:15 am outside my apartment.   Unfortunately the picture of the pumpkin muffin did not turn out.  I have found myself craving a lot of fruit lately. 

Today I had some of my mint chocolate cashew puddingpiecake with date/nut/seed crust and an orange for a later lunch and it was really good.  Before that, for a mid morning snack, I had some sourdough toast with roasted red pepper hummus.  After work I headed out to Crazy Fred's to check out this week's comics since we hadn't been able to make it on Wednesday.  When I got home I attempted another grilled "cheese" sandwich with tomatoes.  It was really decent.  Definitely not cheese though.

I debated on whether I should make myself a "real" dinner or just figure out something easy later on.  When I finally got hungry I didn't really want anything except for fruit of which I have none fresh.  Scouring my kitchen for anything that sounded appealing, I decided to have some granola bars that hadn't held together that make pretty decent cereal.   I had some of this:

that I had opened recently and thought that cereal sounded good.

I prepared the granola bars by crumbling and adding some extra chopped nuts and some raisins.

 Looks good, right?  High hopes for a yummy dinner were had.  Then I opened the hemp milk and was about to pour when I noticed the date said use by 9/9/09.  Usually I wouldn't care so much except that with any sort of milk I try to finish quickly to keep from spoiling.  I only opened this a few days ago and I think I got ripped off at the store, but oh well.

So, now what to do with my beautiful bowl of cereal and no milk?

Mash up some frozen raspberries with a little water!

You would not believe how delicious this was!  And I didn't notice until I uploaded the picture that it is <3 shaped.

I love it when stuff like that happens.