Vegan Harvest Cornbread

Halloween is tomorrow, and we have a delicious meal in the works... until then, here is our own favorite cornbread recipe for you to enjoy. (And sorry about the lack of posts in a while! We do have a lot to blog about! )


Vegan Harvest Cornbread

2 cups white wheat flour, spelt flour, or whole wheat flour
2 cups whole grain cornmeal
2 1/4 Tb baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup + 3 Tb vegetable or safflower oil
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 3/4 - 2 cups milk alternative (such as soy, hemp, almond, oat milks)
fresh corn kernals from 1 stalk corn on the cob
1/3 cup + 1 Tb banana pepper, diced
1/3 cup + 1 Tb red onion, diced

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium bowl, mix all dry ingredients. Make a well in the center of the bowl, and add agave and oil. Then add milk, and combine liquid ingredients with the dry ingredients until just blended with no flour clumps. Place in a medium round pan coated with cooking spray. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes until golden brown.

Our Good Friend Bob

Back in Texas we were only briefly acquainted with Bob, but now that we live here in Oregon, we are only an hour a way to visit our good friend Bob!

Bob's Red Mill that is!

We had a fabulous time- in awe really- while shopping at Bob's Red Mill Store in Milwaukee, Oregon.










When we first got there, we got some lunch at their quite popular cafe. Wonderful split pea soup with carrots and celery in a huge tasty bread bowl, and a side of steamed veggies! It was so filling, and the bread was so soft and fluffy.


Despite being a small-sized store (only setback was that the aisles were too small and it was really crowded), we enjoyed parading down each aisle and finding cool products. We felt like excited little kids! The best part of the store was the bulk section. Instead of buying a whole package of one product (which would cost about $3-4), we loved being able to get $0.40-$2.00 worth of products to try. So, we ended up buying a lot of different products, but our bill was quite reasonable.

Triticale meal, Triticale Flour, Green Pea Flour, White Popcorn, Pumpernickel meal, Rolled Spelt Flakes, Creamy Rye Flakes, 10 Grain Flour, Millet Flour, and Chana Dal Beans!

The popcorn was fabulous - we literally hadn't had popcorn in years, and we made a huge batch of delicious popcorn on the stove. It cooked up just right! Had leftovers the next day and added some nutritional yeast.

The pumpkernickel meal is now a favorite! We think it's better than quinoa, millet, couscous, and steel cut oats. We had some for dinner with just olive oil and it was simple but delicious. There is a recipe for rye crackers on the label, and we are thinking of making some this weekend.

The green pea flour can be used in guacamole, bread, soup, and other creative concoctions. We're not sure how we'll use it yet.

Fig Nuggets, Whole Wheat Flour, Whole Wheat Potato Flaxseed Bread Loaf, Flaxseed meal, Date Pieces, Pumpkin Pie Spice, Kelp Granules, and Apple Pie Spice.

The Figs and Dates are the best! We use them in everything - cereal for breakfast, snacks, ice cream... Note to self - buy these by the case next time!

The wheat potato bread was a light airy bread with a good brany texture but not as soft as we would like. Can't wait to make our own bread with the wonderful flours from Bob's Red Mill.


We also bought some Grande Whole Grains and had that in a Thai Rice Bowl with broccoli, bean sprouts, Just Tomatoes Freeze Dried Peas, and a Thai nut sauce (hemp seed butter, crushed red pepper, garlic, lime juice). Chewy nutty grains!


As for the spices, we've used the Pumpkin and Apple Pie spices like crazy - oatmeal, smoothies, ice cream, and apple salads. Here's a pic of a fresh apple salad with apples, dried fig pieces, apple pie spice, and vanilla soy yogurt. A healthy filling dessert!


Hoping to visit our good friend Bob once a month! Can't wait to bake and cook with all of the flours and grains! What are your baking suggestions for cereal meals and grains and flours? - LK

Raw Autumn Delights

Laughter is the best medicine....of course, vegan raw food is even better! We made some wonderful raw sweets over the past few weeks, and now it will be easier to make raw food with our trusty Vitamix. Raw vegan food makes you feel so rejuvenated and lively!

For lunch today, we enjoyed our first homemade fruit & veggie smoothie - a plum, frozen bananas, a few dried apricots, and a zucchini! The vitamix was so quick to blend it - eating veggies is so easy now!

We also enjoyed an apple fig medley (~80% raw), with diced local apples, dried fig pieces (Bob's Red Mill), Frontier's Apple Pie Spice seasoning, and no-sugar added natural apple cider. Hints of cinnamon, orange, and Autumn! Fresh, yet warming.


A refreshing treat to cool you down - homemade raw ice cream! Bananas, homemade almond mylk, cinnamon, and agave. We enjoyed it with Pure of Holland's apple cinnamon bar (The apples are so good. The bar is similar to Larabar, but has brown rice protein. They claim it's all raw.)


With the almond pulp leftover from making almond mylk, we made raw almond apricot cinnamon cookies, just "dehydrated" in our oven at the lowest temperature.

Our major raw treat this week was sweet potato vanilla spice cinnamon rolls, with currants. We followed the cinnamon roll recipe we used last time, but shredded raw sweet potato in the Vitamix and addeed dried currants to make a "Halloween" filling.
Instead of using all almonds for the nuts, we used half raw almonds, half raw pecans. Then, for the icing, we mixed Artisana's Raw Walnut Butter with Frontier's 5 spice powder and some water. The sweet potato filling made it moist and more nutritious! We'd like to do maple, lemon blueberry, apple, and pumpkin variations, too. This filled us up for hours.

It's so nice to indulge in dessert when it's good for you! Happy Autumn!

Catch Up!

Instead of the raw dessert post we promised, we'll wait till the weekend since we plan on making a tasty raw treat with our new ultra exciting member of the household - a Vitamix!

Until then, here are some photos and quick rants on our most recent foods.






A Farmer's Market feast! Our last time at the farmer's market for the year, and we'll miss it so much until mid April when it starts up again. Curly kale, broccoli, Danish squash, pumpkin, eggplant, garlic, bell pepper, banana pepper, corn, red onion, and yellow onion.

Savory Millet Breakfast - with tofu, Braggs, nutritional yeast, basil, and garlic powder







Orange/Yellow Watermelon - tastes just as sweet, juicy, and delicious as red watermelon!


Crisp Juicy Red Grapes!




Thick sprouted wheat pasta with sauted kale, garlic, onion, tomatoes, and eggplant (farmer's market produce!)



Wonderful salad with local salad greens, tomatoes, bell pepper, and lemon pepper tofu.



Now that the farmer's market is over, we signed up to be apart of the Community Supported Agriculture, and we get produce every week from "Growing Wild Farm". Carrots, spicy radishes, lots of bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, turnip greens, fresh bay leaves, and (not pictured) wonderful mixed salad greens.


Indian Sweet Potato Stew - Sweet potatoes, cabbage, pecans, onion, bell peppers in a spiced Indian sauce served with chewy red rice. Got the recipe from online somewhere. Great hearty warm dish for a chilly day.



We've been enjoying the outdoors whenever we are blessed with a clear sunny day - such beautiful scenic drives, farmland, and trees. The leaves are changing colors! - LK

No Cooking - But Still Creative in the Kitchen

Why no cooking? Because everything here is RAW!

Yes we've been busy in the kitchen creating some healthy fresh tasty meals.

Using fresh local vegetables, raw buckwheat groats, and some nuts, we've whipped up soup, salad, and pizza...

Our Raw Taco Soup was fresh, satisfying, and full of flavor. We found this recipe on Gone Raw, and it is definetely a keeper. Tomatoes, chives, corn, bell pepper, garlic, and onion. So easy and so good...[Ok, so our meal wasn't totally raw that day, as we had chips and salsa :) ]


Another recipe we enjoyed was Raw Mock Tuna Salad. Using two recipes we found online, we made up our own tasty version:


Raw Mock Tuna Salad

Salad Base:
3/4 cup sunflower seeds, processed semi-fine
1/4 cup raw walnuts, processed semi-fine
1-2 Tb kelp powder or dulse flakes
onion (not sure amount we used)
1 large carrot, shredded
celery seed sprinkled

Dressing:
3/4-1 cup water
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 cup + 3 Tb soaked buckwheat (overnight)
1-2 Tb nutritional yeast
1 Tb Braggs, or salt to taste
optional juice of 1/2 lemon

Combine all salad base ingredients in a medium-sized bowl. Combine dressing ingredients in a food processor or blender and process until smooth. Mix in dressing with the salad base ingredients.

We really loved the versitality of this salad. We served it with cucumbers, carrots, crackers, etc, and would love to change up the flavors and do a sweet version with pecans, pineapple, and shredded sweet potato, or do a Thai version with raw nut butter, pepper, and lime juice.



The freshest healthiest pizza we've ever had - raw pizza of course! Using fresh veggies such as tomatoes, bell pepper, red onion, garlic, and avocado, we topped a homemade buckwheat flax pizza crust.

Soaked buckwheat overnight, then processed until smooth. Added 4-5 garlic cloves and lots of flaxmeal, then flattened ~1/8 inch thick and stuck in the oven for the day at the lowest temp possibly (for us that was 170 degrees F) .
Very hearty crust with juicy tomatoes, spicy onion and garlic, and creamy avocado! We completely raw meals for a couple of days as it made a good amount of leftovers.


So far, we've enjoyed our raw eats. It fills us up and makes us feel so good and energized.

Now, you can't have a good 'raw' time without dessert right? ... Next post you might see some raw treats!

LK

Breads and Cookies Made Fresh Every Weekend

Mmmm... Do you smell the whiffs of yeasty bread baking in the oven? Do you drool just looking at a yummy choc-ful-of-ingredient cookie that's just finished baking in the oven?... Well, we certaintly do, and we especially enjoy our weekends to bake and cook some great tasting treats. This week we made rye bread, pancakes, and oatmeal cookies!


We followed have cake will travel's Rye Whole Wheat Bread as a base for our Homemade Rye Wheat Bread. We changed it up a bit with the flour amounts because our flour stash is just about gone. We are planning to go to Bob's Red Mill next week to stock up on some great flours, grains, and other goodies!
Instead of 1 cup bread flour, 1 cup dark rye flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, and 2 Tb wheat germ, we used 1 1/4 cup white wheat flour, 3/4 cup dark rye flour, 3/4 cup whole wheat flour, and 3/4 cup rye flakes processed coarsely. We put this in the bread machine on dough cycle, then baked it in the oven in a loaf pan. Rye flakes sprinkled on top was the perfect touch. This bread had such a wonderful flavor and texture. Baked just right with a nice crust and a soft crumb inside. This recipe and the sweet potato (or pumpkin) wheat bread from have cake will travel are our top two favorite bread recipes!


For a nutritious breakfast this morning, we made our homemade pancakes, only this time we added hemp seeds, hemp milk, and applesauce, and omitted the tea and oil. We used fresh blueberries for the topping instead of cherries. We served this with more applesauce, slightly warm like a healthy syrup, along with a sprinkle of hemp seeds, guava jam (periodically), and raw walnut butter.


We created a new favorite oatmeal cookie. I don't know where the original recipe came from, but we made it our own - into a chewy hearty oatmeal cookie. I like this recipe because it's not cakey, dry, greasy, or like a sugar cookie. It's full of great texture - we used extra thick rolled oats, and lots of it! It uses all natural ingredients, with no margarine, and with pineapple juice and agave as the sweetener.

Our first batch was "Maple Lemon Date" oatmeal cookies, flavored with maple extract, lemon zest, and date pieces, along with walnuts. To die for, so zesty, yet nutty and comforting.

The other batch was "Chocolate Mint" oatmeal, although our mint extract is a mixture of peppermint and spearmint, so it wasn't the greatest addition. Next time we will use pure peppermint. What is so tricky about chocolate mint cookies is that you don't want to overpower the cookie with too much mint. I think the amount of extract we used was a subtle amount, it just had that spearmint flavor that we didn't want. Actually, these taste better frozen, like a chocolate mint chewy fudge treat. There are a lot of chocolate chips along with almond pieces.

This recipe is very versatile - we plan to adapt this basic oatmeal cookie with different flavors. Ideas: apple cinnamon oatmeal, banana oatmeal, cranberry orange oatmeal, nut butter oatmeal, and pumpkin pie spice oatmeal cookies.

Stay tuned this week for a post on our raw eats! We will try to post more frequently with smaller posts (just that work keeps us busy for most of the week).

Have a yummy week! LK