Almost completely allergen free - a few exceptions

I bought a box of the Bisquick Gluten Free mix - way too expensive for how little you get and how easy it would be to make, however I wanted something simple. Next time, I will just make my own mix, though.

Anyway! This morning, the veggiebaby and I decided to make chocolate chip pancakes. And they were dairy free, gluten free AND soy free! Yum!

We followed the recipe on the Bisquick box - 1 cup of the mix, 1 cup of milk (we used almond - yum!), 2 tbsp of vegetable oil (we used coconut oil), and 1 egg (milled flax seed - 1 tbsp milled flax seed + 3 tbsp water)

Once we were done, we slathered it in Earth Balance Soy Free Buttery Spread. However, since we used the coconut oil, it really didn't need the Earth Balance. Next time, I will just not even use the butter. The coconut oil made it really delicious and moist. Coconut oil is so good.

Enjoy the incredibly sloppy camera phone picture. See how healthy I am? Slathered in powdered sugar!

I gotta stop disappearing!

So, yet again, it has been an incredibly long time... about 6 months. Yikes!

Unfortunately, I don't have many foodsy updates this time around. Daphne and I have been so incredibly busy - I just finished up my sophomore year of college, started a full-time job, working another part-time job and we just moved into a new house. Busy, busy ladies!

I'm hoping that I will be able to post more often, now that I am not so unbearably overwhelmed by school and that I have a much better kitchen for cooking in! My most recent creation has been a vegan version of Lamar's donuts - they were so delicious, they tasted exactly like the real thing (umm, yummy! Fried, chocolate covered sugar bread!)

We've started to incorporate more gluten-free food into our diets - and I've noticed a definite change in how I feel. So, expect some vegan AND gluten-free recipes to pop up every now and then :]

Thanksgiving.

Oh, to say that Thanksgiving was a fiasco would be a complete understatement. A holiday with a toddler, especially one who is getting over a cold, is better known as a Total Disaster. But we survived. And we tried all sorts of delicious experiments in the kitchen! My favorite had to be the pumpkin pie. Daphne's favorite was the mashed potatoes.

Also, the tofurky was excellent and I will be using that marinade again next year. I am so not one of those measuring spoons kinda gals, but it was basically soy sauce, lime juice, garlic and a pinch of brown sugar. It sat in there all night and then roasted in it for two hours the next day, with a slapdash of delicious herbs on top - parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (yup.). Along with cumin, because I love the stuff, pepper, celery salt, paprika, more minced garlic and a dash of cilantro. Yum!

The pumpkin pie was a simple vegan pumpkin pie recipe with tofu. Nothing very fancy about it. But what made it super delicious was what I put on top! I cheated big time and used Nature's Path Organic Pumpkin Flax Plus Granola Cereal. Just threw it right on top and baked. What I believe I will do next time is to broil it for a few minutes so it gets good and crispy on top.

We also made a bread pudding! Oooh it was delicious. I bought some run of the mill raisins from Whole Foods, the 365 Organic brand and some of that ever so scrumptiously evil Silk French Vanilla Creamer. Mmmmm. The recipe called for rice milk, but I thought the french vanilla would make it taste a little bit more like the bread pudding from my childhood. I didn't get any pictures... and it has been devoured, so you can just make up in your head what it looks like. But here is my scrumptiously modified recipe for vegan bread pudding :]

Bread Pudding
4 slices of bread, torn into chunks
3 cups Silk French Vanilla Creamer
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp vanilla
1tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup raisins

Throw the bed into a baking pan, mix all of the other ingredients together in a bowl, pour on top of the bread and mix it... mix it good. Then... bake at 350. After about 15-20 minutes, I took it out, stirred it up (because all of the liquid and the raisins will settle in the bottom) and stuck it back in the oven. This was amazing. The juices really plumped up the raisins, giving them this delicious flavor that I could not get enough of.
However, next time I think I may omit the brown sugar and make a cinnamon icing and mix it in instead. Give it more of that sticky, mushy, creamy look of bread pudding from my childhood.


So, the Thanksgiving food was amazing. But the pitiful, cranky baby... not so much. Although she did have a blast playing with her cousins Legos table for about an hour.

Eeeep now it is time for gingerbread cookies, cranberries aplenty and Celebration Roasts. Yippee! I love this time of year :]

I disappeared! Also, cookie dough!

Alright. I disappeared. Sorry about that (is anyone reading this anyway? Nope :])

So, I've been on this delicious sweet kick lately. Severely enjoying my "world's fattest vegan" status. I'm pretty sure I've got it. Anyway! Two of my most recent inventions were: pumpkin spice sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookie dough balls (Yes!)

I was searching everywhere for a recipe for pumpkin sugar cookies that you could use cookie cutters on.. and couldn't find a single one! So I got fed up, found my original sugar cookie recipe from when I made them for Daphne's birthday party (they were adorable! little pink strawberry sugar cookie giraffes. Yum! ) and tweaked it a little bit.

Pumpkin Spice Sugar Cookies
1 cup pumpkin
1/2 cup Earth Balance
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1 egg substitute
3 cups unbleached flour (I used whole wheat)
1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice

You just mix everything but the powdered sugar together. Sprinkle your surface with the powdered sugar and then roll your dough out with a rolling pin while your oven is preheating to 350. People always suggest that you roll it out and then let it sit in the fridge for x hours. I'm too lazy for that business. I just go straight from there. Get it the width you want, then cut away!

These cookies turned out very cake-like, so I suppose it's a good thing we were planning on icing them anyway. They were scrumptious and Daphne loved them - so they get the Vegan Baby Seal of Approval!

Also, I hope you guys are enjoying my exceptionally professional pictures :P

The second recipe... eep. Fat Girl's Surprise. It was to die for. I had to give them away just to keep from eating them. Who doesn't love cookie dough? And when it's vegan... you don't have to worry about that whole salmonella thing. Yuck! So... here goes :]

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls
For the cookie dough:
1 cup Earth Balance
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 egg substitutes
2 1/4 cup unbleached flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Chocolate chips (I prefer Enjoy Life)

Cream the "eggs", butter, sugars and vanilla. Add in flour, salt and baking soda and mix well. Throw in chocolate chips. Roll the cookie dough into balls and put them on a baking sheet in your fridge (for a few hours) or your freezer (for half an hour).

Melt down some chocolate chips and once your cookie dough is good and firm, take them out and either drizzle the melted chocolate onto the balls or roll them in the chocolate, then put them back on the cookie sheet (I actually found it easier to use wax paper underneath them). Stick back in the freezer... or fridge if you're not lazy and eager.

And in half an hour (or more, if you went the non-fat girl route :]) you will have... this:

Well, hi!

Welcome to my blog. This is my first attempt at a "recipe" blog, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm a little slow. I've been doing a lot of cooking & baking (see: experimenting) lately and have been told several times that I should post my recipes.

A little about me, while we are getting to know each other?

I am a single mom. I have a little girl named Daphne. We are both happy little vegan women. Before Daphne, my vegan diet consisted of a LOT of burritos (delicious, I might add...), nuts, raw veggies and more burritos. I've become a little bit more creative since then, but don't worry, I find it hard to go a week without a burrito and am always trying new and delicious things with them. There will always be burritos to be had. Maybe I should have named this blog something about burritos. And maybe I should shut up about burritos...

My ambition in life is to save the world. Really. I am getting my nursing degree currently, but will continue my education to get a PhD in psychology, but whether or not I use that to help people living with developmental disabilities or to help people recover from addiction, I am not sure. However, my side-line passion is... CUPCAKES. I love cupcakes. I'm pretty indifferent when it comes to cake itself, but I sure love cupcakes. They are just tiny little cakes and for some reason, that makes them infinitely more epic.

My house is a mess. Always. Even when it is clean before I go to bed, by the time my daughter takes her first nap, it is a disaster. I have one incredibly large cat named Casanova. He is a Maine Coon and a total butthead. He likes to snuggle and bite you at the same time. And he loves Daphne. I have another cat named Harlequin, but he is a big baby and is afraid to leave my mom's house, so we go visit him often. And then two old ladies named Roseanne and Groucho. They are 17 years old and are just the sweetest, gabbiest little old ladies. Oh. And we have a fish. His name is Ishmael. He's kinda lazy. I hope to get a much larger fish tank one day. And eventually, I want the tank from Finding Nemo.

Finding Nemo, by the way, is the favorite movie in this house. Daphne will pick it up and bring it to me 1-2 times a day and say "ISH!" She loves "ish". So, if for any reason, I ever randomly quote Finding Nemo... you can just assume we are watching it for the 80,000,000,000th time!

Likes: Hiking, camping, bonfires, meditation, reading, journaling, eating, complaining, contemplating, baking, listening to music, playing with Daphne, nit-picking, driving, sleeping, terrorizing my cat, burning candles, environmentally-friendly incense burning, andawholebunchofotherthings.

Dislikes: Lists that get too long!

I hope you enjoy my recipes... you know... when I get around to posting them.