Yummy eats and the perks of working on an organic farm

Sorry I haven’t been updating lately—I’ve been super busy with school and work and cross country. I managed to do all my homework Friday, though, so now I can finally update!

I found lots of pictures of yummy food on my camera. I forgot all about them! But, here they are, in all their glory.

Chickpea cutlets from Veganomicon

Vegan milk chocolate! Yum

Burdock root tea---looks gross, but I love it. Mom made it She makes my veganism very easy.

Vegan pound cake from Veganomicon---very addicting!

Salad with a butt-load of hummus. Yum!

Yeast-risen pancakes. Recipe courtesy of veganyumyum.com

Fronch toast and tempeh sausage from Vegan With A Vengeance. It tasted just like french toast!

Vegan pizza. Who needs cheese when you can have vegetables? I used my sister's recipe for pizza dough.

Raspberry-cinnamon oatmeal and peaches

Homemade steamed vegetable dumplings. I'll put up a recipe soon!

So those are the yummy eats I’ve been eating. Actually, I haven’t had any of those eats in a while, I’ve been eating whatever I can find because I haven’t had much time to cook lately. I think Sunday will be my cooking day, because I won’t have to worry about school or work or anything and I can just spend time in the kitchen

So what are the perks of working on an organic farm? If you’re a good enough worker, you get free produce! Okay, well not all the time, and this is the first time I’ve gotten free produce (other than eating the occasional vegetable destined for the compost.) But I’m so excited! At work yesterday, we were packing squash to be put in boxed shares for delivery, and they were so cute. They looked like mini pumpkins! I told the person I was working with how much I loved them, and he said I could have one!

So I picked out this girl.

Isn't she pretty?

I think it’s called an ambercup squash, which is a variety of winter squash. Either that, or a gold nugget squash, which is also a winter squash. I love winter squash because they store so well. I’m going to wait to eat her until it gets colder and I need warm, comforting, squash after raking leaves or playing in the snow I think I’ll either make soup or stuffed squash. Yum!

Hummole

Is it hummus? Is it guacamole?

Yes, and no…it’s both!

I was feeling creative the other day, and when I spied my ever-ripening avocado my dad bought for me at the supermarket, something clicked. I loved hummus, but when I made it for myself it wasn’t creamy enough. And I was getting sick of always making plain old guacamole out of my avocados.

My solution? Combine the two!

I took half an avocado (perfectly ripe) and some tahini, lemon juice, garlic, and salsa. Weird combination, right?

I blended the lemon juice, garlic, and tahini in the food processor, then I added the avocado and the salsa. Voilá! Hummole. Or Guacummus. I actually don’t like this as much as hummus, or guacamole, but it’s great if you want something like hummus but don’t feel like waiting for all the chickpeas to blend perfectly and get creamy. I might try to perfect this recipe in the future, but it was a fun little experiment to try I think I might want to stick with just plain old guac though. Actually, I used the other half of the avocado to make guacamole and ate it on top of some steamed kale. Perfection. I even got my friend Niki to eat some.

Creamy and delicious

Nothing beats creamy and delicious rice pudding. Especially when said rice pudding only takes five minutes to prepare (if the rice is already cooked.)

The only problem?

I suck at cooking rice. The taste of the pudding tasted just like my beloved Kozyshack rice pudding, but the texture was off. I had to chew the rice, instead of just being able to gently mush it around in my mouth and have it melt into deliciousness. This is, of course, no fault of Katie’s. It’s entirely mine because I didn’t cook the rice properly. Next time I’m going to use more water and cook the rice longer. Or I’ll try it with oatmeal, another ingenious idea of Katie’s. I made this rice pudding for the spiralizer giveaway, but I’d been wanting to make it for a while.

The original recipe can be found here. I doubled the recipe but used half a thing of silken tofu, and instead of using water, I used vanilla oat milk.

What? Oat milk? First soy milk, then rice milk, then almond milk and hazelnut milk and hemp milk and now they’re making oat milk? Yes, oat milk. And it tastes delicious. Although not everyone agrees with me. It does have a bit of a weird aftertaste, but it’s so good. It’s like drinking oatmeal. I can’t wait to try it in my oatmeal. What can I say? I love oats.

I also made a nice loaf of delicious banana bread from my trusty Veganomicon.

That book is like The Joy of Cooking for vegans. I can’t wait to try out the other recipes in it. Although I have this thing in my head that I can only make pumpkin and maple things in the fall and winter, and all the recipes I want to make (well, dessert recipes,) are made out of either one or both of those. Well, I’ll have a feast once the leaves start changing color.

My next post will revolve around a crazy new dip/spread I invented. Actually, someone else may have already invented it. Anyway, I’ll be back later.

Rice would be nice

Rice pudding, that is! Sorry for the lame rhyme.

I’ve been craving rice pudding for a long time. I made myself some a while ago, but it just wasn’t very pudding-y. Actually, it was more like rice that had cinnamon and sugar and rice milk (yes, I made rice pudding with rice milk. Very rice-y.) It wasn’t creamy and melt-in-your-mouth delicious, it was boring and it didn’t even come close to my old favorite.

The kind I want needs to be like Kozyshack rice pudding, which I was in love with before I went vegan.

I was creeping looking at Katie’s blog today, and I saw that she had a recipe for rice pudding that rivaled my beloved Kozyshack’s.

And I also saw that she would give six entries into her spiralizer giveaway if I made one of her recipes.

And I used up my vanilla extract on Saturday, so now I’m just waiting for my pa to pick me up some on his way home from work and I can finally make my beloved rice pudding, which I haven’t had in over a year now…yikes!

In other news, I went to the farmer’s market with my dad on Sunday again. This time we didn’t get any eggplant and we found out the blackberries went up by $1 after we bought them. We had some delicious corn on the cob and zucchini boats stuffed with soy chorizo that was sautéed with a bunch of vegetables for dinner. The zucchini came from our garden and was very yummy.

Last week I made some peach pie with the farmer’s market peaches, but I used a cobbler filling recipe instead of a pie filling recipe and it tasted like peach soup with pie crust. It was very good, just not quite pie-like. I made peach cobbler last night using the recipe from Vegan With A Vengeance, which tasted awesome. I’ve made it before, and it tastes so good every time… Here’s a picture of the cobbler-soup-pie, which doesn’t look too soupy in the picture. Although this was before I put it in the oven.

And on July 31st I made a cake. Why? Because it was Harry Potter’s birthday! And I wanted an excuse to make cake.

The picture is being temperamental and wants to go sideways. I took it on my phone…not the best quality, but my camera was hiding in the couch at the time. Just found it today

I also made a yummy dip today, which I’ll post about later. Here’s a hint: it uses avocado.

I should probably get back to reading The Essays of E.B. White and writing a reflection of each essay…how is this summer when I have to do homework? Anyway, I’ll be back at some point soon to talk about rice pudding again.

New Site

So…I’ve switched to wordpress.
(Sorry, blogger.)
I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do with this blog, so I guess I’ll just leave it up. Or delete it. Or something.
Anyway, my new link is this:
http://garbanzogirl.wordpress.com/

Farmers Market Loot

I know, I still haven’t talked about West Virginia/Virginia. I will, someday…
And sorry for not updating for about three weeks…
Anyway, today I went to the farmer’s market with my pa and we got some of the best loot ever.
No pictures, because I just suck at taking pictures of stuff. I always forget. I can take pictures of some of the stuff, because I haven’t eaten it yet, but some of it was eaten…sorry!
We bought a gigantic eggplant for $0.50—what a bargain!
We also got some delicious bi-color corn. We bought a dozen ears for $6! Apparently bi-color corn is sweeter than white corn. I ate some of it raw. Delicious Then Pa cooked it all and we had a big feast of corn, eggplant parmesan (eggplant with tomato sauce for the vegan), and homegrown tomatoes with onions, basil, and fresh mozzarella (no mozzarella for me.)
We also bought some summer apples, which are like macintosh apples. I haven’t had any yet, but I’ll probably have some with peanut butter tomorrow.
There was also some “not-so-perfect” peaches, which had spots on them but they’ll probably taste fine. We got a huge bag for just $2!
We also got some blackberries for $3, which wasn’t cheap, but I’m a sucker for some good blackberries. I proceeded to eat them all when we got home.
I really liked going to the farmer’s market. I love how foods are seasonal—it makes them so much more special when you can eat them. If I buy peaches and apples all year round, when they’re actually in season, I won’t even be able to tell the difference. But if I only buy seasonal produce, they’ll seem like such a treat when I can eat them. I’m definitely going to try to eat seasonal produce from now on, because it makes each season more delightful, it’s better for the environment, and it’s healthier because the produce comes from just a few miles away, as opposed to a few thousand.

Sorry…

I don’t know when I’m going to get around to posting about vacation and stuff, because I’ve been pretty busy lately. So just bear with me for now, I’ll get to posting…eventually =)

I’m baaaaaaaaaaack!

It feels good to be back home after a week of camping and hiking. I love being outside, but I missed my pets and my family. Speaking of family, my Dad got a phone call from my sister while we were on vacation and we heard the amazing news that she’s engaged! Congratulations, sis! I love you
In other news, I’ve decided to be vegan again. I’ll be a bit more lenient with it, so if my Dad makes some delicious pancakes for breakfast and I really want some than I’ll eat them. But I’ll stay away from things like ice cream and milk and cookies. Being vegan definitely kept me from eating unhealthy things. And when I was vegetarian, I felt really really full after meals and I didn’t like it very much. I also noticed that eating so much dairy has caused me to start breaking out It might be because I’ve been eating s’mores and cookies, and relatively unhealthy food in general, but being vegan definitely kept my face clear. I’ll be back later to talk about my trip!

Camping trip

I’m going hiking and camping in West Virginia for a week starting Sunday. I’m so excited! However, I have some sad news…I’m not going to be vegan while I’m there. It’s because I’ll be hiking with my dad and my brother, who are both not vegan. It will be much much much too inconvenient to have to prepare a vegan meal all the time in addition to a vegetarian meal, and it’s going to be much easier if I just give it up for a week. And then I realized that I would have to stop being vegan now to get used to dairy and eggs again. I’m pretty sure I’ll be vegan once I get back from the trip. I ate a non vegan cookie today…I have to admit, it was completely delicious. But I still remember why I went vegan in the first place, and I plan on being vegan again when I get back.
I’ll be staying at a campground right by Seneca Rocks. My dad wants to go to Harpers Ferry when we’re down there…yay for history. Anyway, I won’t be updating for a week, and I probably won’t update tomorrow because I’ll be busy with work and packing.
I hope you have an awesome Fourth of July!

Blueberry grump and fudge

I made a big blueberry grunt last night. Except I like calling it a blueberry grump. Much more fun. I’ll try to remember to take a picture of it. I didn’t get to take a picture of the fudge. I completely forgot and ate the rest. I didn’t eat it all myself though. Family members helped. =) One day I will remember to take a picture of my food before I eat it all. I’ll still put up the recipe though. The recipe isn’t exact, because I didn’t measure anything when I made my fudge. So just follow the recipe loosely until you have a consistency and taste you’re happy with.
Delicious fudge recipe
4 tablespoons margarine (I like Earth Balance)
3 tablespoons rice milk
1/4 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup powdered sugar
Melt the margarine in a saucepan and add the milk. Mix in the cocoa powder and the powdered sugar. Pour onto a plate or into a mold and chill in the refrigerator until it’s hard. Simple, right?
I know, this isn’t healthy at all but it’s delicious. And it doesn’t matter as long as you don’t eat the entire batch at once. My friend Niki tried the fudge but she said it wasn’t very fudgey. It isn’t exactly like fudge but it tastes pretty similar. Good enough for me!
Since I keep forgetting to take pictures of my food before I eat it all I’ll put up some pictures of delicious food from a while ago.

Tofurkey! Yum.

15th birthday cake…not vegan, but delicious. Hopefully I’ll veganize it one day.

Homemade rice cream.

Fake chicken salad. I found the recipe here.

Vegan whole wheat muffin. Here’s the recipe. I substituted apple sauce for the oil.

Chickpea curry from Vegan With A Vengeance.

Sautéed vegetables. Onions, some plant that grows in the backyard that I can’t remember the name of, tomatoes, a little bit of olive oil, and salt. So good =)