Zucchini, Dates and Reese's Galore

With Jenai off to explore her new home at Stanford, Xóchitl has had to recruit some fabulous bakers to help out with the summer project (aka Zobella, her boyfriend, Agustin, and his lovely sister, Victoria).

The week started off with a lesson on dehydration. Xóchitl and her moms used the dehydrator to add a twist to some of the garden grown goods. They made sun dried tomatoes (great in rices) and super-spicy dried chillies (which are excellent additions to any dish). The dehydrator has opened up a whole new slue of exciting possibilities to experiment with including raw cheese-its, and kale chips. Note: Be careful when crushing up hot red chillies. Breathing too many in is very painful (learned from experience).

A multitude of zucchinis from the garden prompted Xóchitl to settle next on a baking venture incorporating zucchini—chocolate zucchini muffins to be exact. While Xóchitl is by no means a subscriber of the "paleo" diet (let alone any other diet), having a lactose intolerant step-mom and a vegan sister means that sometimes the "paleo" recipes are best for making desserts that the whole family can enjoy. These zucchini muffins were inspired by an online recipe for chocolate zucchini bread (here).

Since she (tragically) didn't have nutella or any chocolate spread, Xóchitl simply mixed a cup of almond butter with 3 table spoons baking cocoa powder  (which is awesome and lasts forever) and a tablespoon of powdered sugar. She used the food processor to shred two mid-sized zucchini and added those to the mix, and used vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips from Trader Joe's for some extra flare. This recipe was not actually vegan though as it did use two eggs (shout out to Xóchitl and Jenai's beautiful chickens who provided the eggs). Overall, this is a very forgiving and flexible recipe and the amount of zucchini, chocolate, and sugar/sweet stuff can easily be changed depending on the preferences of those involved and the materials available and it will still taste fantastic.

One thing to note is that the cooking time depends mostly on the size of the container. Since these were made as muffins rather than bread, they only took 10 minutes to fully bake. Another thing is that while they taste great on their own, a little bit of butter and honey exponentially increases their deliciousness factor.

The next item on the cooking agenda was inspired by Zobella's grandmother who has an amazing recipe for simple date-based dessert known as "Monkey Dates." While Xóchitl has always harbored a suspicion of dried dates and their wrinkly nature, this dish proved to her that her concerns were unfounded. She has now accepted that dates are great fruits in their own right.

The recipe is fairly flexible. The base/topping is made like the topping of a crisp: a mixture of oatmeal, flour, sugar, cinnamon, and melted butter. After making mixing the ingredients, the product is split in half. Put half of it into the bottom of a buttered baking dish. The filling is made by simmering dried figs in near-boiling water until the concoction becomes thick and soupy. This mixture is poured unto the base and then the rest of the topping can be added. The entire dish is then baked at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. For more specifics, just ask.

The result is delightful—sweet and crumbly. Add whipped cream or ice-cream for an extra flourish.

The invention of Reese's peanut butter cups is one of humankind's greatest accomplishments (maybe just a little below landing a man on the moon). This idea was the basis of Xóchitl's next baking project which followed in the Reese's tradition of adding peanut butter and chocolate to produce magic.  Xóchitl made these no-bake chocolate peanut butter bars. This is one of the easiest recipes imaginable. Every ingredient (there's only 5--plus any additional spices you want to add) is delicious on its own so there really is not anything that can go wrong. Plus, it does not even require the use of an oven! 

Because Xóchitl did not have graham crackers, she replaced them with thin ginger cookies. Basically any type of crunchy cookies would work though (they are really just there to add to the texture). 

All in all it was a great week. But now that Jenai is home again, the team is looking forward to an even greater one. 

Patriotic Watermelon Cake!

Jenai's been wanting to make this "paleo" watermelon cake recipe since last summer, so along with Zobella and Xóchitl, she finally decided to tackle it. We share our results here!

The recipe was pretty simple for the most part. Cutting the watermelon into cake shapes was a breeze (Xóchitl did an excellent job) as was toasting the almond slices for the top. Unfortunately though, we ran into a lot of difficulties making the vegan coconut whipped cream. So many in fact that in the end we just went with your standard hand-whipped heavy cream.

The biggest issue was that we tried to use canned coconut cream rather than refrigerated coconut milk like the recipe calls for. The coconut cream basically just got really frothy when we whipped it and didn't have the right consistency at all. So we then decided to make frosting using this recipe, adding cornstarch (a substitute for the arrowroot powder in the recipe) and lots of coconut oil. Like the recipe says, we heated the mixture up and then cooled it for about an hour. But when we tried to whip it up and apply it to the cake base, it was still much to drippy made the watermelon look as if it was rabid and frothing at the mouth. At this point, we just decided to go with the dairy whipped cream. Jenai was so disappointed to waste the coconut cream and oil, that we put it in a bowl in the fridge to deal with later. Fortunately, the mixture ended up hardening nicely, which means we may have just needed to refrigerate it longer... Anyway, it will be excellent as cubes to put into smoothies or on toast and oatmeal. Yay for healthy fats!

Coconut mishaps aside, the cake was successful as a sweet and refreshing addition to our lovely sister Zobella's 4th of July party.
Wishing you all the best!

The coconut cream salvation cubes

Brunch! Blueberry Oat Waffles and Tofu Frittata

Welcome! 

This blog will be a record of our culinary adventures during the summer of 2014. 

We plan to post about once a week and will be sharing a vast array of sweet and savory recipes with an emphasis on hearty, nutritious, delicious and (mostly) vegan meals. Some recipes will come from existing online blogs (when this is the case we will provide appropriate links), and others will be mashups/experiments of our own. 

We greatly encourage feedback, and suggestions, and look forward to sharing our love of cooking together. 

We felt that the perfect way to launch this blog was to honor our dear father, MiLo, who has cooked us thousands of scrumptious breakfasts throughout our lifetimes. 

We cooked him a breakfast of vegan blueberry oat waffles and swiss chard frittata as inspired by Isa Chandra Moskowitz's delightful blog The Post Punk Kitchen. 

Below we will provide photos and comments documenting this experience. 

The frittata included: 

1 tablespoon olive oil

6 cloves garlic, finely chopped (Note: Isa's recipe calls for 6 but we used 4 instead)

1 bunch of red chard, rough stems removed, chopped well (about 4 cups)

2 teaspoons dried oregano

1 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce (use tamari if gluten free)

1 teaspoon wet mustard (dijon or yellow, whatever you got)

1/4 teaspoon tumeric

several dashes fresh black pepper

1/4 cup nutritional yeast flakes

salt to taste

1 pound firm or extra firm tofu

Note: For cooking instructions, see here. 

 For the waffles, we needed: 

1 cup white whole wheat flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

1 cup quick cooking oats

1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce

1 1/2 cups unsweetened almond milk (or your fave non-dairy milk)

3 tablespoons pure maple syrup

2 tablespoons canola oil

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 1 1/2 cups frozen blueberries

Note: we used sweetened almond milk without using maple syrup, and substituted coconut oil for canola. For further instructions, see here. 

 The recipes turned out to be very simple and enjoyable to follow and the results were delicious. 

Both dishes tasted great on their own but were even more divine with our individual additions (pictured below). 

Jenai had her frittata with sriracha hot sauce, Xóchitl had it with cayenne pepper and our dad had it straight up plain. 

For the waffles, Jenai used crunchy cookie butter, raw cacao nibs, cardamom and cinnamon. Xóchitl had hers with earth balance margarin, lemon, brown sugar and raw cacao nibs, and our dad used a multitude of toppings including raspberry jam, honey, peanut butter, powdered sugar, and maple syrup. We found it is best to go crazy with the toppings. There's no such thing as too much goodness.  

Here are pictures of the happy results:

Ever since Jenai's Japanese friends in China taught her the blessing that is said before and after every meal, she has begun to do the same:

Before the meal we say, itadakimasu いただきます, which literally means "I humbly receive", as a way of honoring all those who have played a part in bringing the food to the table, as well as to the life within the food, which we accept graciously as a part of the cycles of physical energy and spiritual nourishment. At the end of the meal, it is customary to say gochisōsama (deshita) ごちそうさま (でした), which again expresses gratitude for a delicious meal.