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Posts Tagged ‘breakfast’

Mixed Berry Protein Breakfast Cakes

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , , , on January 9, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Alright everyone, I love you but let us keep this short and sweet. I’m exactly half way through Catching Fire, book 2 in the Hunger Games trilogy, and every second I take writing this is time I could be using to read about Katniss and the oh-so-perfect Peeta. (even though I already know what happens!!)

One of the things I have really strived for since going vegan and revamping my diet is getting rid of cereal. I was majorly addicted to the convenience of cereal and would often have it for breakfast and occasionally dinner. yeah…sort of missing out on a few food groups when you do that!

So I’ve had to find new breakfast foods, which I find a lot harder then new lunches or dinners. Second only to the green monstah (which I’m still uber addicted to!), I think this has been my favorite new breakfast. It’s one of those unfortunate recipes that has a lot of really odd ingredients but it comes together pretty easily once you have everything.

Though, all I can think of as I post this is, I had a lot of people scoff at the Green Monstah smoothie (Major kudos to Aubrey for giving it a shot and letting me know she enjoyed it!! ), I can’t even imagine how people are going to react to hemp protein powder…

Mixed Berry Protein Breakfast Cake Parfaits
adapted from Healthful Pursuit
serving: 1 cake

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup Egg Replacer egg whites
  • 2 tbsp hemp protein powder
  • 1 tbsp coconut flour
  • 1 tsp melted coconut oil (you can also use 1 TBSP of coconut butter but I couldn’t find it anywhere)
  • 1 tbsp apple sauce
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 5-10 drops liquid  stevia – I used 10
  • 1/4 cup frozen berries (you can also use fresh but I used frozen in the cake and fresh on the side)
  • 1/2 container of vanilla non-dairy yogurt (I used So Delicious Vanilla Coconut Milk yogurt. super yummy)
  • handful of fresh mixed berries

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 375F.
  2. Combine all ingredients but berries in a small bowl and mix until fully incorporated.
  3. Stir in berries.
  4. Put mixture into one cup of a muffin tin.
  5. Place in the preheated oven and bake for 25-28 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
  6. Serve with the yogurt and fresh berries (I like to crumble up the cake and mix it in with the yogurt and the berries to form a mushy bowl of deliciousness)
So, this recipe doesn’t originally suggest serving it with yogurt and berries but I found the cake really hard to eat alone. It just has a very unusual flavor with the hemp protein powder and the stevia that I wasn’t used to. It also wasn’t terribly filling on its own. When I mixed it with the yogurt though it became a sweet, hearty breakfast that would last me all morning. When I make this, I will make 5 cakes at once so I have breakfast for the week.
I’ll admit, the first time I made this, I felt like a huge crunchy-granola hippie. Hemp protein powder?? Come on! Who actually uses that?! BUT the results were yummy. hmm…Maybe those hippies are onto something. Who knows…maybe I’ll start rocking some major bellbottoms and fringed vests. Right on, man…
NOW BACK TO HUNGER GAMES!!


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Bringing in the New Year with a Green Monstah!

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , , , , on January 3, 2012| 2 Comments »

Happy 2012, everyone! I hope you had a safe and happy New Years. I kept things chill. I had dinner with a friend and then we dragged our butts to The Common. We attempted to watch the fireworks but had a meh view. But it was a good evening. I knew I didn’t want to start 2012 with a hang over- I wanted to be productive and start the year on a positive note- so we kept the drinks to a minimum. It was a perfect mix of celebratory and low key.

Now that the new year is here, I’m sure we are all sick of seeing chocolates and sweets everywhere. I know that I am! My body started to revolt against all the junk food the week before Christmas. I just couldn’t take it anymore! Everywhere I went there was sugary confections and big bowls of comfort food. I need something green and healthy, which is why this Green Monster Smoothie (or Green Monstah Smoothie, as we Bostonians call it!) is perfect for your post-holiday, new years-resolution diets.

Green Monstah Smoothies

from Oh She Glows

1 cup  almond milk
1 TBSP ground flax seed
1 TBSP nut butter (I used peanut butter)
2 handfuls of baby spinach
1 banana, frozen
3-4 ice cubes

Add all ingredients to a blender in that order and blend until smooth. Consume and feel awesome!

I’m not even exaggerating when I say that this smoothly will make you feel great and full of energy. The week of Christmas, when I was working at my retail job after a full 8+ hours at my regular job, I had about 15 minutes to myself from when I arrived home to when I had to leave for my second job. I would make this and drink it in the car. It gave me so much energy that it was actually a problem one night when I was working behind the cash register and didn’t have any customers. I was dancing around my co-worker, John, because I couldn’t stand still. He kept giving me weird looks.  “It’s this awesome Green Monstah smoothie I made!!!” I said . “Did it have crack in it”, he asked. In fact, it does not! But it will help you shed that sluggish, junk food haze and help give you energy for all those New Years Resolutions. Yeah!

Speaking of resolutions, here are mine. I decided to put them on the back of my door so I can check in and see how I’m doing every once in a while.

Do you like number 5? That one comes courtesy of my friend, Haley. We have a $10 bet riding on that one so I definitely have to keep it! lol!

I’m pumped for 2012. I think its going to be great! What are some of your resolutions? You know, besides eat more vegan meals 😉

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Scrambled Veggies and Tofu

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , , on December 19, 2011| 3 Comments »

I have the day off today!! I’m soooo excited. I work two jobs and I can’t remember the last time I had a whole 24 hours to myself.

But, I’m definitely not just hanging out doing nothing. I took the day off so I can focus my efforts on the single most important day of the year…Cookie Baking Day, obviously! Each year, my mom and I usually set aside one day around Christmas to bake our Christmas cookies, which we then give away at parties and as gifts. Of course, I’m flying solo this year because there wasn’t a weekend that I was free so Mom and I could both bake. It’s a bummer but so far, so good. I’m jamming to It’s a Punk Rock Christmas and A Day to Remember and singing really loudly and obnoxiously.

I started my day off with this yummy breakfast. A girl needs fuel for an all day baking/rocking out marathon!

Scrambled Tofu and Veggies
from Post Punk Kitchen
serves approximately 2-3

Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium chopped white onion (about a cup)
2 cups cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon thyme, crushed with your fingers
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon tumeric
1/4 cup water
1 lb. extra firm tofu, drained and pressed
1 teaspoon salt
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
juice of 1/2 a lime

Directions
Heat oil in skillet over medium-high. Saute onions 3 minutes, until softened. Add mushrooms, saute 5 minutes more. Add garlic, saute 2 minutes more. Add spice blend and mix it up for 15 seconds or so. Add 1/4 cup water and deglaze the pan,  scraping the bottom to get all the garlic and spices.

Crumble in tofu and mix well. Don’t crush the tofu, just kind of lift it and mix it around. You want it to remain chunky. Let cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally and adding splashes of water if necessary to keep it from sticking too much. Lower the heat a bit if you find that it is sticking. Add lime juice. Add nutritional yeast and mix it up. If it seems too dry add splashes of water. The moistness really depends on how much water the tofu was retaining before you added it.

PPK suggests serving this with salsa and guacamole. I didn’t have any guac but I mixed salsa in with it and it was SO good.

I’m officially done one batch of cookies, have a bunch more chilling and am working on my laundry. I also took the dog for a drive. I would be such a kick ass house wife. I will now be accepting applicants for husbands. Tattoos preferred but not necessary.

 

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The Great Bread Dilemma

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , , on October 21, 2011| 7 Comments »

I had a little break down in the bread aisle last week. Don’t feel bad for me-It was due to Karma. About 2 years ago, my roommate and really good friend Melinda, told me about a breakdown she had in the bread aisle because she could not find a decent bread without high fructose corn syrup. I laughed at her and rolled my eyes.

I was not laughing last week.

Here’s the scoop: I’ve had it in my head since the beginning of October that I wanted to make apple butter (coming soon!). My thought was, ‘how delicious would apple butter be smothered on toast for breakfast? OH! On cinnamon toast for breakfast.’ After that I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. I simply had to have cinnamon bread with apple butter. So I began my search for cinnamon bread.

Not a simple feat. By the third store and after looking at more bread than I could count, I sort of felt like the teacher from Daria who sort of freaked out and got the one ginormous eye. Yeah…I felt like that. All the bread I was finding either  had A. high fructose corn syrup or other chemicals and/or B. raisins. I wanted my bread to be simple with ingredients that are not overly processed. I didn’t want to start my day by shoveling chemicals down my throat! And HFCS is a chemical. I don’t care that once upon a time it was corn. Its made in a frickin’ lab for Pete’s sake!

'WHY can't I get BREAD without frickin' CHEMICALS or RAISINS' yeah...that was me...

And don’t even get me started on raisins. I HATE them. Know the book Green Eggs and Ham? It’s basically 20 pages of this little kid talking about all the places he hates Green Eggs and Ham. That could be me…but with raisins (“I do not like them here or there, I do not like them anywhere, I do not like any raisins, I do not like them, Sam-I-Am”). I know the book ends with him liking Green Eggs and Ham but that’s not the point…My point is, Raisins suck and finding a cinnamon bread without raisins AND high fructose corn syrup/other chemicals is damn near impossible.

Hence the break down. Melinda, feel free to laugh at me and roll your eyes. I deserve it.

So I decided to just make it. This is an attitude I (and my mom and her friend, Lu) often take with crafts and I take all the time with baked goods, like cakes and cookies, but bread? Bread is a whole nother ball field. I had never made bread before and prior to the beer pretzels I’ve never had much luck with yeast. My frustration overrode practicality, though. Bring on the bread making!!

I was so excited to make my first loaf of bread I literally took a picture at every step...I'll only subject you to a few

Thankfully, I just happen to have a bread machine lying around courtesy of my roommate, Bonnie’s, Grammie. Bread is surprisingly easy when you just dump it in a pan and let the bread maker do the work!

Raisin-less Cinnamon Honey Bread

adapted from Sunbeam’s Bread Recipes

1 1/4 c. water

2 TBS of Earth Balance vegan butter

3 1/4 c. bread flour

1/4 c. honey*

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon (I was a bit generous with my cinnamon. It may have been closer to 1 1/2 tsp)

1 packet of yeast

Place the ingredients in the bread boxes in the order they are given (except the yeast). Put all the liquid ingredients in and then all the dry ingredients. Make a well in the flour and place the yeast in the well. The yeast should NOT touch wet ingredients. (the directions told me this at least three times so yeah… don’t let your yeast touch the liquid layer). Snap the bucket in your bread maker. Set your machine for sweet dough and the desired color of your crust.

Voila!

This bread was Ah-Ma-Zing. It was super moist and springy and it tasted delicious as toast with almond butter and apple butter. AND it didn’t have raisins OR funky chemicals. Take that super market bread!

This is totally doable without a bread maker, especially if you have a kitchen aid stand mixer. I have a feeling, based on the research I did for this recipe, that you would follow the exact some procedure, except you would layer all the ingredients in the bowl of your mixer and then start it on low. When the dough is formed, you would let it rise for about an hour, punch it down, dump it out of the bowl, shape it on a greased pan, let rise for another hour or so and then bake it. I’ll try it next time this way and let you know how it works out.

OR! if you try it without a bread maker, let me know how it goes in the comments section!

*I know a lot of vegans do not consider honey to be a vegan product due to the fact that it is technically an animal product. I disagree. I’ll be updating the ‘Life’ page soon with my thoughts on Honey. For now, you can just sub in 1/4 cup of sugar, which is what the original recipe called for. I just didn’t want sugar in my bread. I felt honey was a bit more natural and a lot less processed.

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A Tale of Procrastination and Some Ugly Muffins

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , on October 12, 2011| 3 Comments »

These muffins are waaaay over due. Remember last week when I was all “I bring in baked good every monday for my co-workers”? Well, I technically didn’t lie about that. But this week was a holiday on Monday, so I was going to bring them Tues. Then I played hookey from all my responsibilities on Monday and went frolicking in an apple orchard all day, shoved my face with cider donuts, then went to my friends and shoved more yummy baked apple things in my face.

Clearly, I was ditching my responsibilities for important stuff. Clearly…

yum! Streusal topping!

I was undaunted though when on Tuesday night I faced the challenge of making 3 dozen cinnamon muffins after working all day and going to a dance class. Who cares if it’s already 9 o’clock? I thrive in these situation. Procrastination is a very dear friend of mine. Think I’m kidding?

  • In 5th grade, in what could be my first encounter with procrastination, I was forced to write a Dare essay for class. I waited until the last night and I can remember sitting at our kitchen table in NC with a very annoyed Mother near by. That paper won as the best in my class. I got a nice little award and got to read it in front of the school.
  • In 10th grade, I was assigned to write a journal about a Civil War soldier. A journal? pssh, I’m going to make a whole frickin’ scrapbook complete with tea stained, hand written journal entries and mounted pictures from various sources…the night before. Oh yeah, got an A+ AND won the history award that year (Hermione and I could have been besties that year…I was a little bit of a kiss-ass…Hey, Ms. Donnelly!)
  • In my junior year of college, I decided that working on research papers over an extended time was overrated. So for all my essay finals, I worked on them from about 8pm – 8am straight the night before they were due. I pretty much had instant french vanilla cappuccino running through my veins. Passed them all with flying colors!

Point being-  3 dozen muffins should be childs play for me. Except, I sort of didn’t take into account that this is a new recipe…and I wouldn’t know what to expect. Whoops! Cue the biggest baking disaster I’ve had in a very long time.

looked at that squished, mauled bottom. So sad...

Cinnamon Streusal Muffins

adapted from King Arthur Flour

Topping
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup diced pecans (optional. I did not include since I know so many people who don’t like nuts)
1/4 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
3 tablespoons Earth Balance vegan butter

Filling
3 TBS of Earth Balance vegan butter

1/2 cup of brown sugar

1 1/2 TBS ground cinnamon

3 to 4 tablespoons water

Batter
1/2 cup Earth Balance vegan butter, melted
3/4 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk (I used soy milk)
2 Ener-G “eggs” (Ener-G is an egg replacer you can get at Whole food. 1 egg = 1 1/2 tsp dry Egg Replacer plus 2 tbsp water)
1 3/4 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
2 tablespoons cornstarch
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup cinnamon chips or butterscotch chips (I omitted the cinnamon chips because I just couldn’t find them anywhere. I’m not even sure if they are vegan. I think they would have added a lot to this recipe though)

Glaze:

4 TBS Confectioners Sugar

1-3 tsp of water

Splash of vanilla

Preheat your oven to 400°F. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with cupcake papers, or grease it lightly.

Prepare the topping by mixing the ingredients together until crumbly. Set aside.

Prepare the filling by mixing the Baker’s Cinnamon Filling with enough water to make filling with a soft, pudding-like consistency. Set it aside.

To make the batter: In a large bowl, whisk together the melted butter, milk, and eggs. In a separate bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients, including the chips. Add the dry mixture to the liquid, stirring just until combined.

Divide half the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Dollop 2 teaspoons cinnamon filling onto each muffin, then top with the remaining batter. Sprinkle with topping, pressing it in lightly. (NOTE: Do NOT over fill these. You want to be very careful with these. If the cinnamon sugar mixture overflows or seeps down outside the liner, it will form a lovely, sticky, hot glue that will prevent your muffins from coming out of the pan. )

Bake the muffins for 20 to 25 minutes, or until they’re golden brown. Remove them from the oven, and wait 5 minutes before transferring them from the pan to a rack to cool.

Mix Confectioners sugar,  water and vanilla together until its the consistency of glaze. Drizzle onto muffins with a spoon. Yield: 12 muffins.

The battlefield. See those streaks of brown? That would be the cinnamon sugar glue

Yes, so these were kind of messy but that was entirely my fault. As I noted above, be very careful when spooning the cinnamon mix into the cupcake liners. You don’t want it to drip anywhere else or it will form a lovely adhesive. Also, don’t over fill them. This is common sense for someone who works with cupcakes. With cupcakes though, they will cool and you can still pop them out of the pan without much problem. These have that sticky cinnamon which crystallizes to the pan and involves lots and lots of scraping…and cursing…to get the muffins out. And when you do, they are all ugly and deformed. So, yeah…don’t over fill them!

Don’t let the squished bottoms fool you though, they are still pretty tasty

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