Cashew French Toast (vegan and soy-free)

In an effort to reduce the amount of soy in our diet (it just felt like too much) I came up with this recipe. I didn't do anything brilliant - mostly just found a recipe for cashew french toast and combined it with our usual tofu french toast recipe to get the same great flavours.

Cashew French Toast

ingredients

2 cups cashews (soaked if time allows)

3/4 cups almond milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 TBSP maple syrup

1 tsp cinnamon

dash salt

~10 pieces of soft whole wheat sandwich bread, stale or lightly toasted

oil for pan frying

Put all ingredients except the bread and oil in blender and blend, add a little more milk if it seems too thick.

Dip the bread in the mixture, if there's lots of excess scrape it off.

Fry in oil on medium heat.

Serve with maple syrup.

PS - Happy St. Patrick's Day from Henry. We went out for dinner in uptown and afterward walked around the festivities (the weather was beautiful and it is a university town so there were a lot of party-ers out and about). And Henry had a wonderful time. One woman gave him a little hat and once he had the hat everyone loved him. He ran all around the main public square. He danced to a man playing a drum. Another woman danced with him and gave him a necklace. He was a little nervous about the attention sometimes but mostly he was having so much fun and was very interested in the people.

Adventures in Raw Food

So looking up vitamix recipes had me coming across several raw food recipes as well. And it got me interested. It's obvious to me that there are lots of benefits to eating more raw food and I also thought it would be fun to try brand new foods.

Here's some raw food snacks I tried: kale chips and sweet potato chips from recipes on this blog. Both done in the dehydrator on a low temperature so still considered raw, the enzymes should all still be intact I believe. The kale chips were really good, they have a very flavourful tahini dressing on them so they tasted just like a Caesar salad. The sweet potato chips were just ok.

I also tried a raw hummus recipe from Carol Alt's Raw 50 where the chickpeas are soaked overnight instead of being cooked. Apparently cooking legumes changes a lot of the protein to carbohydrates which I don't want. The raw hummus wasn't gross or anything but I didn't like it and it's still sitting in the fridge. Too bad because I eat a lot of hummus.

And I got really adventurous and made this recipe for raw sushi. The funnest part is that instead of rice you use raw parsnips put through the blender until it is the consistency of rice. This was good but it was quite a bit of work so don't think I'll be making it again anytime soon.

And tonight I made this raw pad thai using kelp noodles. It was really good and really easy, I will definitely be making it again. And the kelp noodles are so cool! Once we get basil growing in the garden I could even have all the ingredients in the house for a quick unplanned lunch.

I think it would be really cool to make a big switch to eating mostly raw foods and maybe one day I'll do it for a month or something. In the books I've been reading the authors always talkabout how they feel so much better on a raw diet and all their chronic health problems improve. Yes, I'll definitely try to make a big switch one day when I'm not pregnant, I'm dying to see if I would feel any different. I still have lots of raw food recipes bookmarked to try - zucchini pasta for sure and I still have to delve into the world of raw desserts!

Henry, of course, has not been even trying many of these fun new foods. Actually he did try a few sweet potato chips but eventually decided he did not like them. He's sticking to the old favourites like french fries and chocolate granola (a new granola recipe that I've invented recently, just need to perfect it and I'll post it for sure).

Chia Seed Chocolate Pudding

This recipe for chocolate pudding is so easy and tasty and good for you it's crazy. The taste and texture is just exactly like a really good chocolate pudding. I haven't tried it in a regular old blender, even with my vitamix there is a slight gritty texture that you only notice when you think about it so not sure how well a regular blender would do.

Chocolate Pudding

1 cup almond milk (or any milk)

1/3 cup chia seeds

1 ripe banana

2 TBSP agave nectar or other sweetener

2 TBSP cocoa powder (or cacao to make it a raw food)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Put all ingredients in the blender and blend! (Soaking the chia seeds in the milk beforehand might help with blending.) Might be a little warm after blending so place in refrigerator for an hour or so.

Makes 2 servings.

And here are some pictures of Henry feeding the ducks yesterday. We had a crazy warm day (up to 9C!) and spent all afternoon outside.

Vitamix

Big news! I bought a vitamix. I've owned it for just over a week now and I am in love. After breaking 6 blenders in 4 years (3 of those were $100+ too!), I decided to go crazy and buy the super expensive vitamix. So far I am very happy. I am definitely doing things with it that a regular blender just couldn't handle at all.

Henry and I were both very excited when the box was delivered. He kept saying there were toys inside. But he didn't seem too disappointed when he saw it was a blender instead. He just said "make it smoothie".

One of the first things I made was my very own almond butter which was delicious. I was thinking it might be one of those things that tasted extra good when it's freshly made and the almonds are freshly roasted. But no, it tasted exactly like the stuff that you buy. But I'm sure it is cheaper and it was super easy.

I'm making smoothies like always. But now they are much much smoother and I can put lots of cashews and almonds in and even a raw carrot. And it blends up the seeds from raspberries. We haven't had a single one of Henry's straw cups get blocked since we got it.

Both Henry and Lightning McQueen approve of the new smoothies. I have started drinking them too.

And today I tried this recipe for strawberry parfait made from strawberries and cashews. I admit the first bite tasted like cashews but by the second bite I didn't notice, it just tasted really good. And Henry really liked it which is a big deal since he is still not eating much.

Kevin and I are really loving a chocolate pudding I've been making in the vitamix using chia seeds and I will post the recipe for that soon. We didn't like the vitamix recipe for hummus but I did LOVE that the vitamix could easily make a double sized recipe of hummus - that's a litre of hummus, about a week's supply for us over here. AND I love that instead of using tahini, which is so annoying to scoop out and measure and makes a big mess, I can just use sesame seeds and the vitamix will turn it into tahini! What I think I will appreciate most though is not having to replace the blender in 6 months.

Today we are having a snow day. We needed some snow to replace the stuff we lost in the last week of warm temperatures and rain. We missed our playgroup today because I didn't want to drive in the blizzard so Henry and I will spend the day hanging around the house. Playing with toys and watching the snow and snuggling. It is looking less windy now, we'll have to go play outside soon.

Soy-free Vegan Creamy Pasta Recipe

I want to share this new recipe that I've come up with and am quite proud of. It is delicious and super healthy - overflowing with vegetables. Oh and it's super easy to make too. I adapted it from this vegan alfredo recipe that I've been using for years. Since I'm cutting back on our soy consumption recently I wanted to try to make this recipe soy free. It tastes just as good as ever and now contains more veg! Makes a generous amount of sauce for one box of pasta.

Ingredients

Sauce

1 1/2 cups cashews or almonds or a mix soaked in water for 4 hours or more

1 1/2 - 2 cups chopped cauliflower, steamed till soft

2 cloves garlic

1 cup almond milk

4 TBSP olive oil

1 tsp lemon juice

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp salt

~375 g of pasta

optional

~1 lb mushrooms, chopped

a bunch of chopped spinach, fresh or frozen

Directions

Start sautéing the mushrooms in a large pan and cooking the spinach and cooking the pasta. While they're going make the sauce:

Drain the nuts. Place all sauce ingredients in a blender and blend well. When the mushrooms are done add the sauce and the spinach to the pan, mix and heat. You really just want to heat the sauce to warm. But heating it also mellows the raw garlic taste so you can heat for longer and taste as you go.

Since you don't really taste the spinach in it too much I like to serve it with another green such as steamed broccoli or asparagus on the side. It is also good with a side salad of course.

It is so good even Henry likes it usually. Just not this night for some reason. Actually I think this was because he wasn't in the mood for getting his hands dirty and he couldn't get his fork working. The next day he was a pro with the fork and ate lots of leftover pasta.

New Food

We tried some interesting new vegan foods this past week.

The first was my second go at this nut cheese recipe. This time I used half almonds and half cashews so it didn't taste so much like cashews. It doesn't taste like too much of anything on its own so is easy to flavour with some herbs and garlic powder and makes a perfect cream cheese spread for bagels. It was nice to have a bagel with cream cheese for the first time in years and also nice to have a really quick filling snack or lunch in the house that is not hummus, something that my mostly vegan diet lacks. The recipe is from the book Live Raw.

The second was this steamed sausage recipe. I used the bratwurst spice mixture so that I could serve it up with my sauerkraut. (If I make sauerkraut again next year I must remember to give some away, one cabbage makes a lot!) This is a good and simple recipe. But it's not quite perfect, it's the kind of recipe that makes you want to tweak it and tweak it to make it just right for you. For Kevin and I that will mean attempting to make it juicier. One of the cool things about them is that they hold together so amazingly well so I figure we can sacrifice some of that hold together power to add some extra oil to the recipe and maybe even some onion pieces too? Got to experiment!

And here's Henry's food experiment of the week - taking a bite out of a giant kohlrabi. He saw it on the cutting board and insisted that it was a big apple even though I told him it wasn't. He also insisted that it was Henry's big apple. He seemed to believe me finally when he managed to get a bit off and spat it out. But then he tried it again when he saw it all cut up on the counter, again he spat it out. If only he was always so adventurous with all his eating - he is still on a diet of mostly smoothies and bread.

Some Food Experiments

I did a few food experiments recently. Well I followed recipes so nothing super experimental. Here are my results.

I finally got around to making my own almond milk. It was super easy and pretty tasty. It has a lot more taste than the store bought stuff - a marzipan taste. I quickly got used to the taste though and think I could get into the hang of making it on an at least semi-regular basis.

I also tried making some cashew yogurt using this recipe. I did add a little probiotic powder since I had it even though the recipe didn't call for it. It turned out a lovely consistency and you can see from the picture with my maple syrup mixed in I was so ready to love it but I didn't like it at all, couldn't even eat that bowl. Too much cashew taste, it also had a bit of a fizz on my tongue which I've gotten in bad batches of my soy yogurt before. I am trying to eat a little less soy so there may be some more experiments like this coming up.

And to keep things interesting, here are some pictures of Henry on a fall hike we did last week.

Highlights from the Weekend

We had a lovely family weekend. We spent some time out and about and some time at home, some time being productive and some time relaxing, some time just the three of us and some time with friends. And we had some nice meals too.

Got to try our latest homebrewed beer that we've called "hoptometrist". It is definitely our best yet with all the bitterness that we wanted.

Drove out to Fergus, one of our favourite small towns in the area and did some playing and some walking.


Finally stopped at this overlook that we see on our country drives and found out that it is quite beautiful. And Henry got to do some walking up and downhill, his favourite kind.

Saw this snapping turtle on the golf course when we were doing Waterloo's RIM Park walk with some friends.

Had homemade chocolate beer waffles with homemade ice cream and chocolate sauce for our Sunday dinner - delicious! Recipes from Vegan Brunch and Vegan Scoop.

Carrots and Potatoes

We had the first of the 2011 garden carrots today. I've been waiting for them to get nice and big, some of them were. I dug up just enough to use tonight and left the rest in the ground to keep growing.

I also dug up all the potatoes.

And I got a full basket of tomatoes.

Henry had fun in the garden while I worked today.

We ate our garden bounty today with fondue. I got a recipe for vegan fondue from Kim Barnoiun's Ultimate Everyday Cookbook which I have out from the library. It was delicious. Earlier this week I used another recipe from the book to make squash ravioli with squash from the garden, I had planned on taking a picture but it got all stuck together so was a big old mess to look at thought it tasted great. For the fondue, I prepared lots of good things to dip: homemade rosemary garlic bread, broccoli, cauliflower, garden carrots, roasted garden potatoes, and garden tomatoes.

It was a fun meal. Too bad Henry is a super picky eater at the moment and all he ate for dinner was some smoothie and a bit of apple.