tea berry-blue

 

Mirrored from Nommable!.

My mom doesn’t like cherries.

Well, that’s not completely true.  I’ll amend the statement: my mom doesn’t like maraschino cherries. The nearly-fluorescent syrupy sweet things that barely resemble anything that could have ever grown on a tree.

When I was a kid, this was a pretty sweet deal.  Ice cream sundaes?  I got the cherry.  You know, unless my brother got it.  But there was a one in two chance I was getting an extra cherry.

Then I got older, and less excited about cherries, and more excited about boozey things that cherries go in.

So, around November of last year, I started experimenting with making cherries my mom would actually like.

Here’s the resulting recipe.

 

Mirrored from Nommable!.

Last night, I made these for a party I am going to today. I was confident that vegan bread pudding would turn out okay, less confident that the cupcakes would work. Here is what I used:

Cupcakes:
1 1/2 lbs vegan bread, donuts, or croissants
4 cups chocolate hazelnut milk
1/4 cup bourbon
1 cup brown sugar
2 Tbs cocoa powder
1 Tbs cinnamon

Hazelnuts
1 7oz package chopped hazelnuts
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tsp ground black pepper
2 tsp cinnamon

Sauce
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup bourbon
2 Tbs cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350 F

For the nuts:
Whisk everything but the nuts in a small bowl.
Toss in the nuts and stir till well coated
Spread evenly on greased cookie sheet
Toast in over for ten minutes
Sprinkle with more sugar if needed.

For the sauce:
Mix sugar and corn syrup in a small saucepan over medium heat until sugar is dissolved, stirring constantly.
Add bourbon. Keep stirring.
Add cinnamon. Stir well until cinnamon is dissolved.
Let cool.

For the cupcakes:
Put foil cupcake liners in cupcake pan
Tear or cut bread into 1″ pieces. Put bread in a large bowl
Mix all other ingredients together in medium bowl.
Pour milk mixture over bread and stir well. Let soak five minutes.
Fill cupcake cups. Add a sprinkle of the toasted nuts to the top of each one.
Bake for 20 minutes.

This should make about 24 cupcakes. Serve warm with heated bourbon sauce poured on top.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

I got to talk to my mom about Thursday, Friday, and Saturday!

Sharon: On Thursday, I ate Caribbean beans and rice from a package and they were delicious and I realy enjoyed it. And I occasionally eat those for dinner when I get home late so that wasn’t anything unusual for me, but I was glad that I keep them in the house. Both Thursday and Friday, I was in interviews, so I ordered salads from a deli. It was a little hard, because all of their regular salads have meat or eggs or cheese on them, so I had to get them to make me a salad. So I ordred their regular spinach salad without bacon or egg. And with ceci beans. But when it came, it had kidney beans, because I don’t think they know what ceci beans are. Because the next day I ordered the same thing with chick peas and I got them. Both days I ate bananas– oh, no, actually. One day one of the other principals brought bagels from up the street, and I ate a plain bagel because I called the bagel place to find out and they said that they don’t use eggs or dairy in their plain bagels.

Friday night for dinner, I made fried zucchini with hummus and pita chips. And that was yummy. And I did the fried zucchini the way PC does the eggplant.

(PC is my friend, Paul Reilly, who is the executive chef of Encore in Denver, CO. Encore is a restaurant committed to using sustainable practices and local, green & organic products.)

That’s in half-flour, half cornstarch. It was really nice.

I thought the pizzas were good. I like to make unusual pizzas anyway. I do think both of those pizzas would have been beter with cheese on them. I thought they were both yummy.

I’m not likely to do it again for a week, but I would certainly do it on and off. I do think that it made me much more cognizant of what I put in my mouth. I used to be really careful about that stuff, and I’ve gotten away from it, so it was a really good reminder to me. I don’t normally eat food that has chemicals, but it did elevate my awareness.

Oh, and I lost weight, which I didn’t expect. It didn’t even occur to me, and when John said he expected to lose weight, I…

John:Yeah, but I got a swollen knee, that’s why I didn’t lose weight.

Sharon At the beginning of the week, I missed meat, and now I don’t miss it at all. I don’t even care about eating it. I do think that even though I don’t eat a lot of dairy, it’s a toss-up between cheese and eggs. But since I was hungry for an egg this morning…that was probably why!

Other than that I I just think that with all the focus there has been lately on things like trans fats, while I didn’t think that all of that was necessary, I do think that better labeling in restaurants and stuff is important. For anybody who wants to make any food choices should know what’s in their food and not have to be embarrassed or made to feel inconvenienced in order to find out what’s in their food.

I think [the idea that some companies are permitted to keep their "secret formulas" off the label is] just plain stupid. You should be able to keep the amount of the ingredient, but not the ingredients, secret. I personally don’t think that dyes should be allowed in any food products. That’s just part of my personal belief. There is nothing about dye that enhances the quality or taste of a food.

I think before someone does this, they should actually plan their meals for the week. I just went to the store and tried to find things that were vegan and that was stupid. You should get a cookbook or go online and plan the first three or four days and what you need. I think if you did it like that, you would be more successful.

My mom really liked both the tempeh and the vegan bacon we ate! She had never had either before and she thought the tempeh was really nice baked on the pizza because it got all crispy. She said that the vegan bacon didn’t really taste like bacon but had a nice flavor and nice crunch.

Here are some pictures from our vegan pizza feast on Saturday night.

[caption id="attachment_378" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Beet, Potato, and Turnip Pizza!"][/caption]

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

I got to talk to my mom about Thursday, Friday, and Saturday!

Sharon: On Thursday, I ate Caribbean beans and rice from a package and they were delicious and I realy enjoyed it. And I occasionally eat those for dinner when I get home late so that wasn’t anything unusual for me, but I was glad that I keep them in the house. Both Thursday and Friday, I was in interviews, so I ordered salads from a deli. It was a little hard, because all of their regular salads have meat or eggs or cheese on them, so I had to get them to make me a salad. So I ordred their regular spinach salad without bacon or egg. And with ceci beans. But when it came, it had kidney beans, because I don’t think they know what ceci beans are. Because the next day I ordered the same thing with chick peas and I got them. Both days I ate bananas– oh, no, actually. One day one of the other principals brought bagels from up the street, and I ate a plain bagel because I called the bagel place to find out and they said that they don’t use eggs or dairy in their plain bagels.

Friday night for dinner, I made fried zucchini with hummus and pita chips. And that was yummy. And I did the fried zucchini the way PC does the eggplant.

(PC is my friend, Paul Reilly, who is the executive chef of Encore in Denver, CO. Encore is a restaurant committed to using sustainable practices and local, green & organic products.)

That’s in half-flour, half cornstarch. It was really nice.

I thought the pizzas were good. I like to make unusual pizzas anyway. I do think both of those pizzas would have been beter with cheese on them. I thought they were both yummy.

I’m not likely to do it again for a week, but I would certainly do it on and off. I do think that it made me much more cognizant of what I put in my mouth. I used to be really careful about that stuff, and I’ve gotten away from it, so it was a really good reminder to me. I don’t normally eat food that has chemicals, but it did elevate my awareness.

Oh, and I lost weight, which I didn’t expect. It didn’t even occur to me, and when John said he expected to lose weight, I…

John:Yeah, but I got a swollen knee, that’s why I didn’t lose weight.

Sharon At the beginning of the week, I missed meat, and now I don’t miss it at all. I don’t even care about eating it. I do think that even though I don’t eat a lot of dairy, it’s a toss-up between cheese and eggs. But since I was hungry for an egg this morning…that was probably why!

Other than that I I just think that with all the focus there has been lately on things like trans fats, while I didn’t think that all of that was necessary, I do think that better labeling in restaurants and stuff is important. For anybody who wants to make any food choices should know what’s in their food and not have to be embarrassed or made to feel inconvenienced in order to find out what’s in their food.

I think [the idea that some companies are permitted to keep their "secret formulas" off the label is] just plain stupid. You should be able to keep the amount of the ingredient, but not the ingredients, secret. I personally don’t think that dyes should be allowed in any food products. That’s just part of my personal belief. There is nothing about dye that enhances the quality or taste of a food.

I think before someone does this, they should actually plan their meals for the week. I just went to the store and tried to find things that were vegan and that was stupid. You should get a cookbook or go online and plan the first three or four days and what you need. I think if you did it like that, you would be more successful.

My mom really liked both the tempeh and the vegan bacon we ate! She had never had either before and she thought the tempeh was really nice baked on the pizza because it got all crispy. She said that the vegan bacon didn’t really taste like bacon but had a nice flavor and nice crunch.

Here are some pictures from our vegan pizza feast on Saturday night.

[caption id="attachment_378" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Beet, Potato, and Turnip Pizza!"][/caption]

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

Due to my own schedule Thursday and Friday, this sadly got pushed back a bit more than I expected.

My mother is already asleep, so I talked to my father about his vegan experiences this week. He said he continued to eat carrots and grapes while at work.

John:
I’m trying to think if there’s anything exotic I did.

I went to the store and bought Cheerios with sugar as a snack. Thursday, I had a diet soda at birthday party. I don’t recall eating anything. I was getting tired of it.

Friday, finished all the carrots and all the grapes. More cereal. had dinner but forget what it was already. We had zucchini strips and something else and hummus and chips, which was fine. It was good.

Breakfast I had orange juice and we went shopping. I got a diet Dr. Pepper. I tried to sneak pretzels at Kitchen Connection but they moved to a different outlet and then it’s all a blur.

Today I came to see my parents. As a gift for their last day on this assignment, I brought them a vegan cookbook, The Vegan Table by Colleen Patrick Goudreau. We made variations on two pizzas in the book, a beet pizza and a southwestern pizza. We also bought some prepared frozen vegan egg rolls as an appetizer, but they were incredibly bland and I thought kind of inedible. As I told my mom, I felt like they were vegan food cooked by people who had never eaten vegan food. There were no seasonings in them at all. Or, at least, it tasted like there weren’t.

The pizzas we made had the following toppings (there will be pics tomorrow):

Beets
Turnips
Potatoes
Arugula tapenade
Tempeh

Pinto beans
Vegan soy bacon strips
Vegan cashew “sour cream” (which I made from scratch based on a recipe in the book)
Avocado
Homemade salsa
Dried chipotle

So that was dinner. Yum! Now back to our regularly scheduled comments from my father.

John: Dinner tonight was pretty good. The pizza was dry. I’m getting tired of– there are certain things I like in my diet that I’m not getting. Butter, cheese, and milk being some of them.

Of everything in the whole entire world, what do I miss? Milk product. I think milk, because I have milk on cereal, chocolate milk during the day, and I would have ice cream at night. The cows are very sad because they need me.

Finding stuff without animal crap is pretty hard, and I don’t know if it’s better for me or not. I am going to keep my diet up for another month!

(He is not really, but he said that that way he can eat the vegan ice cream I bought him tomorrow)

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

Due to my own schedule Thursday and Friday, this sadly got pushed back a bit more than I expected.

My mother is already asleep, so I talked to my father about his vegan experiences this week. He said he continued to eat carrots and grapes while at work.

John:
I’m trying to think if there’s anything exotic I did.

I went to the store and bought Cheerios with sugar as a snack. Thursday, I had a diet soda at birthday party. I don’t recall eating anything. I was getting tired of it.

Friday, finished all the carrots and all the grapes. More cereal. had dinner but forget what it was already. We had zucchini strips and something else and hummus and chips, which was fine. It was good.

Breakfast I had orange juice and we went shopping. I got a diet Dr. Pepper. I tried to sneak pretzels at Kitchen Connection but they moved to a different outlet and then it’s all a blur.

Today I came to see my parents. As a gift for their last day on this assignment, I brought them a vegan cookbook, The Vegan Table by Colleen Patrick Goudreau. We made variations on two pizzas in the book, a beet pizza and a southwestern pizza. We also bought some prepared frozen vegan egg rolls as an appetizer, but they were incredibly bland and I thought kind of inedible. As I told my mom, I felt like they were vegan food cooked by people who had never eaten vegan food. There were no seasonings in them at all. Or, at least, it tasted like there weren’t.

The pizzas we made had the following toppings (there will be pics tomorrow):

Beets
Turnips
Potatoes
Arugula tapenade
Tempeh

Pinto beans
Vegan soy bacon strips
Vegan cashew “sour cream” (which I made from scratch based on a recipe in the book)
Avocado
Homemade salsa
Dried chipotle

So that was dinner. Yum! Now back to our regularly scheduled comments from my father.

John: Dinner tonight was pretty good. The pizza was dry. I’m getting tired of– there are certain things I like in my diet that I’m not getting. Butter, cheese, and milk being some of them.

Of everything in the whole entire world, what do I miss? Milk product. I think milk, because I have milk on cereal, chocolate milk during the day, and I would have ice cream at night. The cows are very sad because they need me.

Finding stuff without animal crap is pretty hard, and I don’t know if it’s better for me or not. I am going to keep my diet up for another month!

(He is not really, but he said that that way he can eat the vegan ice cream I bought him tomorrow)

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

It’s lucky today was the halfway point, because I don’t know how much more of this my mom can do.

When I called, they were eating dinner, which was Vegan pulled pork from “It’s All Good,” a company that makes ready-made vegan products. I have had their beef skewers and thought they were delicious.

Sharon: This wouldn’t be my favorite meal. Daddy likes it more than I do. I don’t like the texture. It’s kind of rubbery.

John: Pork is rubbery!

Sharon: I’m counting down. I’ve kind of had enough. It was fine. But I’m basically eating the same things every day. I would be more adventurous, but I don’t have time to be more adventurous.

John My food today was similar to my food yesterday, but I’m saving the world and doing greater things for everybody so I feel good.

Mary (a family friend) asked us to go to dinner tomorrow and have birthday cake for their son tomorrow night and I said, “we are so screwed.” I explained to her that I was vegan for the week. I told her that I would come over, but I just wouldn’t eat any cake, and she said, “but we’re getting Baskin Robbins ice cream cake, are you sure you don’t want any?” And I told her I couldn’t eat it.

I think it’s good. I think it’s delicious. It’s got pulled pork sauce, so it’s nice and tangy. I think your mother is turning religious, she says this is like Lent.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

It’s lucky today was the halfway point, because I don’t know how much more of this my mom can do.

When I called, they were eating dinner, which was Vegan pulled pork from “It’s All Good,” a company that makes ready-made vegan products. I have had their beef skewers and thought they were delicious.

Sharon: This wouldn’t be my favorite meal. Daddy likes it more than I do. I don’t like the texture. It’s kind of rubbery.

John: Pork is rubbery!

Sharon: I’m counting down. I’ve kind of had enough. It was fine. But I’m basically eating the same things every day. I would be more adventurous, but I don’t have time to be more adventurous.

John My food today was similar to my food yesterday, but I’m saving the world and doing greater things for everybody so I feel good.

Mary (a family friend) asked us to go to dinner tomorrow and have birthday cake for their son tomorrow night and I said, “we are so screwed.” I explained to her that I was vegan for the week. I told her that I would come over, but I just wouldn’t eat any cake, and she said, “but we’re getting Baskin Robbins ice cream cake, are you sure you don’t want any?” And I told her I couldn’t eat it.

I think it’s good. I think it’s delicious. It’s got pulled pork sauce, so it’s nice and tangy. I think your mother is turning religious, she says this is like Lent.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.