Whip Up These!

In attempt to keep the cooking and baking short and sweet, we continue to go back to these two recipes. So easy and tasty and fun to change them up each time.

Awesome Homemade Veggie-Bean Burgers

Makes 10-12 patties

1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1 - 1 1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 cup each cornmeal and wheat gluten
2 1/2 Tb nutritional yeast
2 Tb flaxseed meal
2 cups pinto or black beans
1 Tb canola oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tb Braggs
1 Tb stone ground mustard
2 - 4 Tb diced bell pepper
2 Tb diced onion

1. In a small bowl, mix onion powder, cumin, cornmeal, wheat gluten, nutritional yeast, and flaxseed meal.
2. In a large bowl, mash pinto beans, then add remaining ingredients. Mix until just combined.
3. Add dry mixture from the small bowl to the bean mixture in the large bowl, and mix until well combined.
4. Form 10 - 12 patties. Place on a baking sheet that has parchment paper or has been sprayed with cooking spray.
5. Bake at 375 degrees for 15-25 minutes, or until golden on both sides.Variations: Add 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes or cayenne
Add 1/4 - 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce or Balsamic vinegar
Use white beans, lentils, black-eyed peas, or kidney beans
Add 2-3 Tb finely chopped veggies
Add lime juice and jalapeno





Great for breakfast, snacks, or lunches, these extra fluffy soft biscuits are easy to whip up. Serve with avocado, olive oil, nut butter, or jam.

A basic recipe, with lots of variations possible!Fluffy Baking Powder Biscuits

Makes 8- 12 biscuits

2 cups whole wheat, spelt, or kamut flour
1 Tb baking powder
1-2 tsp sugar or agave syrup
1/2 tsp salt
3 Tb oil
1 tsp vinegar
1/2 cup soy milk or non-dairy milk
1/2 - 3/4 cup water

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add in wet ingredients and mix until just combined. Drop on a baking sheet lined with parchement paper (or use biscuit cutters to cut out biscuits). Bake at 400 degrees F for 12-15 minutes or until just golden.

Variations:
add nuts and/or seeds - such as 1-2 tsp sesame seeds or 1 Tb crushed pumpkin seeds
add nut butter - we use 2-4 Tb sunflower seed butter with about 1 Tb less oil
Oat biscuit - add some quick rolled oats and/or oat flour
Corn biscuit - add 1/4 cup cornmeal and about 2-3 Tb less flour
Pumpkin biscuit - add 2-4 Tb pumpkin puree with 2-4 Tb less water
Make it savory! with 1/2 tsp total of dried herbs or curry powder or even caraway seeds



We also wanted to mention a product that we have our eyes on! Mary's "Gone Crackers Crumbs" look like a wholesome whole grain product to use in replace of those bland and refined bread crumbs! We could whip up a tasty dish with these!

Until next time,

Ready for the Christmas Holiday!

Merry Christmas!

What is everyone planning for their big Christmas feast? Since we are staying in Oregon this year for Christmas instead of traveling back to Texas to visit family, we are having fun planning our meal.


Here's our menu:

• Veganomicon's Cornmeal-masala Roasted Brussel Sprouts
• Creamy Tomato Soup
• Celine's Pumpkin Yeast Bread Rolls, with added cornmeal
• Diet Dessert and Dogs' Tofu Fritata, with lots of good veggies!
  
• Homemade Agave-sweetened Cranberry Sauce
• Italian Cornmeal Cake, sweetened with all natural date sugar
• The Happy Veganarian's Vegan Speculaas
• Cinnamon Roll Biscuits, this time with a cinnamon-maple-fig filling
• "Egg" Nog Spiced Smoothie
  
• Dark Chocolate Bars for sweets! :)

Yummy, lots of leftovers expected!! We are so excited this year to stay here in Oregon and savor our all vegan meal, instead of being surrounded by non-vegan food and smelling the unappetizing meats. All vegan feast galore!What are all your plans for Christmas holidays? We recently attended a wonderful "Sound of Music" musical at our local theater, which got us into the joyful spirit of Christmas. We also plan to drive around and view the beautiful Christmas lights, as well as attend a Christmas Choir concert. Of course, we wouldn't want to miss all of those great classic holiday movies, such as "It's a Wonderful Life"! What is your favorite holiday movies? What is the one thing you most look forward to for the Christmas holidays?

Christmas can be a hectic time, especially if traveling is involved. This year seems to so far be a smoother, easy-going Christmas season. We also finished our gift shopping many weeks ago, mailed them all off in time, and beat the crazy crowds in the stores. Remember to slow down if Christmas gets to stressful! Christmas is more than just gifts and shopping and planning. Christmas is a time to relax, find comfort in family and friends, celebrate Christ's birth, and reflect on all the blessings God has given us.

May Love, Joy, and Peace dwell in your homes and hearts always!
Merry Christmas and God bless,

Oven 24/7 Oh So Sweet

Well, it sure seems like the weekends are all about the oven! We've been using the oven 24/7 to baking sweets, crackers, breads, and to cook casseroles and veggies! :O

It seems that as the holidays come around and as the weather gets cooler and wetter, we get the urge for soft homemade breads and sweet treats!

When we were little, every Saturday morning we would have a breakfast treat. Sometimes it was Pilsbury buttery crescent rolls, sometimes fluffy biscuits and jam, or even pancakes. But the sweetest breakfast we looked forward to was cinnamon rolls! We'd just take the refrigerated Pillsbury cinnamon roll dough from the can and quickly bake up sweet delicious cinnamon rolls. Our favorite was the orange flavored rolls. Don't you smell the sweet aroma of cinnamon and orange in the morning coming from the oven?

As we grew up, we ate less of those delicious (yet sinful, sugar-high) treats. Every once-in-a-while, though, we try to make our own. Very tedious! For an easy alternative, we sometimes make Cinnamon Roll Muffins, but this time we finally decided to try Cinnamon Roll Biscuits!
The biscuit recipe was virtually identical to our favorite biscuit recipe, so it was easy to whip up. This recipe calls for less water, to be able to form a dough that can be rolled out. We spread a filling of date sugar with lots of cinnamon, then roll it up, slice it, and bake it in the oven for ~18 minutes. Instead of margarine, we used coconut oil and brazil nut butter. For the glaze, we used only 1/2 cup powdered sugar and brazil nut butter instead of margarine.

Turned out awesome! The biscuit was flakey, with some crusty edges and soft centers and a delectable gooey filling. It could use even more cinnamon though. Other variations you can try include orange, maple, egg nog spiced, or pumpkin spiced! Great for special family breakfasts or dessert (because they are sweet). Another recipe we have our eye on is Celine's Pumpkin Oatmeal Sticky Biscuits.


For dessert, we baked up some Gluten Free treats!

First up Chocolate Chip Bars. We have the cookbook One Smart Cookie by Julie Van Rosendaal, but we haven't used it in years since we went vegetarian. Recently, though, we decided to try the recipes out again, making them vegan, because Julie really does have great recipes.

For the chocolate chip bars, we followed Julie's Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe and put it in a 9x13 bar pan. We have Bob's Red Mill All Purpose Gluten Free flour blend, so we used that with 1/4 tsp xanthan gum. The flour blend isn't as tasty as the gluten-free flour blend we use for Betty Lou's at work :) but that's ok, the chocolate hid the subtle beany flavor. To replace the egg we used 1 Tb flaxseed meal. We also used coconut sugar and date sugar, which gave the bars a subtle carmelly warm flavor. And of course, we added lots of Equal Exchange 80% and 71% Dark chocolate, which made the bars extra rich and chocolaty! We love chocolate.


Another gluten-free treat - go try Elana's Pantry Gluten Free Fig Bars! We made modifications to make Gluten Free Prune Squares, a perfect snack that's not too sweet but satisfies your sugar craving. We used oat flour instead of almond meal (for a nut-free bar), added a small amount of flaxmeal (for a binder and nutrition), and used prunes and orange juice for the filling. We also recently tried a cranberry lemon version, with dried cranberries and lemon juice. Other variations we would love to try include apple spice, apricot, pumpkin spice...any fruit imaginable!


We would love to hear about more about gluten-free baking and any ideas you all have. Since we do work in the R&D lab at Betty Lou's Inc (check it out!), we are currently focused on gluten free baking and we would love all of your suggestions and tips! Thanks!

So, one last question--what's the place in your house where you spend the most time, and love to be? Of course, ours is our kitchen. Even if it is tiny, we still manage to stay put in our kitchen most of the weekends. You'd think we'd become claustrophobic, lol..

Have a great week!

Texas Gals Southern Cookin'

Even though we live in Oregon, we are Texas gals, and we'll always have a place in our heart for Southern food!

Veggie pot pies, cornbreads, black-eyed peas, biscuits, gravy, and other spicy Southern food.


Cornbread is so easy to make and a delicious buttery (vegan) treat!

How about our Harvest Cornbread or Sweet Potato Jalapeno Cornbread? We've also love just plain cornbread, with a little cornflour for extra softness and melt-in-your mouth deliciousness. Great to make cornbread muffins for easy snacks. (*Update 10/4/09 We baked some jalapeno cornbread, made just a few modifications, and it turned out melt-in-your-mouth awesome).


Instead of the typical Italian calzones, why not a Southern calzone?!
Black-eyed pea calzones with a cornmeal whole grain crust! We just combined onion, garlic, bell pepper, chopped broccoli, black-eyed peas, oregano, and Cajun seasoning and used that for our filling. We served these calzones with homemade mustard vinegrette (with lots of garlic added to this recipe) and an awesome homemade barbeque-cajun sauce (tomato paste, Cajun seasoning, worceshire sauce, bragg's, garlic, oregano, vinegar, oil, and water). A cilantro vinegrette would be good too.


We make biscuits about twice a month! Tahini biscuits and pumpkin cornmeal biscuits, kamut biscuits, baking powder biscuits and cornmeal biscuits, sourdough biscuits, jam biscuits and spice biscuits, and so much more you can do with a biscuit recipe!

We recently tried Tritticale Rosemary biscuits - perfect with olive oil or Southern gravy - and a gluten free biscuit! Gluten-free baking has been an interest to us, especially since we've been experimenting with gluten-free in the R&D lab at work! With a blend of gluten-free flours (sorghum, tapioca, rice, and potato starch), coconut flour, and some xanthan gum, we followed Bob's Red Mill Buttermilk Coconut Pancake recipe (on the back of the coconut flour package) and made Gluten-Free Biscuits. We added 2 Tb flaxmeal and 2 Tb oat bran, and used a blend of hemp and soy milk to make a biscuit baked in the oven. Very good for gluten-free, held together well, and more of a fluffy texture like mashed potatoes in a bread. Good with garlic and gravy.


Veggie Pot Pies are always so comforting, but time-consuming to prepare! So we made it easy!

LK's Easy Veggie Pot Pie

1 vegetable bouillon
1 cup unsweetened soy milk
1 cup water
1 1/2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 bay leaf
1/4 tsp each salt and pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
3 Tb nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp each sage and thyme
1/4 tsp each onion powder and ground mustard
1/4 tsp celery seed
2 Tb oil
1/4 cup diced bell pepper
1 cup broccoli, finely chopped
1 med yellow squash, diced
2-3 large chives or 1/4 cup onion
1 cup potatoes, diced and cooked
3 Tb flour
prepared pie crust or just biscuits or toast!

1. Add first 9 ingredients (bouillon through nutritional yeast) in a small stove pot and cook on medium high heat for 2-3 min.
2. Then add sage, thyme, onion powder, mustard, and celery seed, and simmer while you chop the veggies.
3. Place veggies in a microwave-safe dish, and cook until almost done.
4. Add flour to the stove pot and bring to a boil. Stir constantly until thickens.
5. Combine gravy from the stove pot with the vegetables in a large container.
6. Store in refrigerator until the day you want to have this for dinner.
7. When preparing your dinner, take your prepared pie crust and bake in the oven according to baking instructions (about 10 min).
8. Place the container of the vegetable filling in the microwave and heat until hot.
9. When the crust is just golden brown, take out of the oven. Pour the vegetable filling over the crust.
10. Cut and serve. This will be messy, so another delicious option is to break off pieces of the pie crust, place on your dinner plate, then pour the warm vegetable filling over it, and serve. Or just serve the vegetable filling over homemade biscuits or toast!


She's the sweetest little rosebud
that Texas ever knew,
Her eyes are bright as diamonds,
they sparkle like the dew;
You may talk about your Clementine,
and sing of Rosalee,
But the yellow rose of Texas
is the only girl for me.

ENJOY!

Artisana Raw Nut Butters Winner!

We had a lot of fun with this giveaway--everyone had such great ideas! From breakfast to savory meals to sweet treats, it is wonderful how versatile nut butters can be with a little imagination!

For breakfast, Animal Friendly loves a heartwarming stick-to-your-ribs breakfast, with nut butter melted into oatmeal. Yummy! Ricki says nut butters are great made into a sweet sauce of nut butter, mylk, and spices, poured over baked sweet potatoes--a great alternative to the usual cereal breakfast!

Sweet Karoline is inspired by the coconut butter to make a Thai chickpea pancake, which can be enjoyed for a savory breakfast or as part of a meal later in the day.

Meghan uses nut butters to enhance sauces and pestos. Vegetation and Sara agreed with Meghan, that nut butters could transform soups or curries into "creamy deliciousness".

Most everyone has a sweet tooth, right? Vegetation also listed some easy ways to use nut butters-in smoothies, ice cream, or popsicles. Refreshing! Erica specifically loves raw banana soft serve--a blend of just nut butter, frozen bananas, and cinnamon. Vegan Lisa and Sara both love to top cakes, cupcakes, and caramel apples with luscious raw "buttercream" frosting.

For coconut oil, Deb Schiff recommends Ani's Pineapple Icebox Cake, a big crowd pleaser. She also suggests replacing oil in brownies with tahini--what a nice way to enhance nutrition and flavor in brownies! Rachel H also uses coconut oil for decadent melt-in-your-mouth chocolate chip cookies!

For those of you who love sweets so much that you'd also enjoy them for lunch or dinner--make dessert hummus and serve with cinnamon pita chips and some fresh fruit. Courtney is inspired by the idea of using different nut butters in hummus and changing up the flavors: Pecan butter with pumpkin and cinnamon, Almond butter with cranberries, Macadamia butter with cocoa powder and a touch of vanilla, or Walnut butter and Cacao bliss. Sounds heavenly!
Personally, we (LKSisters) have been using the nut butters in many ways--with fresh fruit over waffles, added to scones, cookies, and bread, swirled into a creamy smoothie, and spread on top of homemade graham crackers...

What wonderful ideas! Now, we're salvating for some delicious food and nut butters!


Alright, now to the results:

Random.org's Random Integer Generator was used to make this as fair as possible. We generated a winner in a more complex way just for something different and fun--Each person entered was randomly assigned a number between 1 and 200, using the random integer generator. Then, the random integer generator was used again to generate numbers between 1 and 200, and the first number it generated that aligned with a person's assigned number was the winner.

The winner will receive a sample of Artisana Nut Butters (tahini, pecan butter, walnut butter, macadamia butter, almond butter, coconut oil, coconut butter, and cacao bliss), plus a few brochures/coupons from the Portland Veg Fest!

Drumroll please....The winner is-----------Erica from Discovering Raw blog!

CONGRATULATIONS ERICA! Erica, let us know where we can send you the Artisana sample pack! We will also email you through your blog just to be sure you get this message.

And thank you everyone for your entries and inspiring ideas! May you all try some Artisana nut butters and continue to be creative in the kitchen!

Saturday Summer Breads & Biscuits

Happy Fourth of July!

We hope you all are staying cool as you celebrate! For us, we are enjoying our 3 day weekend at home - we've been traveling almost every weekend, so this weekend was our time to relax, do some cleaning, hanging out with our cats, and of course cooking and baking.

It's nice during the summer to have cool refreshing meals, which are quicker to make. Salads, dips, sandwiches, fruit smoothies, ice cream, etc. Yesterday we had fun making homemade oatmeal pitas and then had a healthy hummus pita! The recipe was so easy, from our favorite Bread Machine Magic cookbook. We will definetely make these pitas again!

Another delicious Bread Machine Magic recipe was the Shredded-Wheat Bread. This recipe called for crumbled shredded wheat (we used our favorite Arrowhead Mills Shredded Wheat Cereal). The bread had a soft yet slightly dense texture and a great wheaty taste; made perfect slices for sandwiches!

We love to start our Saturdays with breads and biscuits for breakfast. Ricki has an awesome Peanut Butter Biscuit recipe that we had to try! But instead of peanut butter (we try to avoid nuts), we used tahini. These Tahini Biscuits were devoured! Soft and fluffy, with a delicate crumb and a good nutty maple flavor. We served these with pear butter, maple syrup, fresh strawberries and cantelope, and a glass of soy milk.


Another Saturday biscuit that we enjoyed was Pumpkin Cornmeal Biscuits. Moist from the pumpkin puree, nutty and textured from the cornmeal coating on the bottoms, and subtle sweetness from the maple lemon glaze. A good biscuit for breakfast or with a meal. We served these with more maple syrup and coconut oil.

With our pumpkin biscuit we had a refreshing Raspberry Banana Fruit Smoothie with Healthforce Nutritionals Fruit of the Earth Mix. We also recently purchased Healthforce Nutritionals Vitamineral Green mix and both are so good! A blend of healthy energizing rejuvinating vitamins and minerals from natural wholesome raw sources. The Vitamin C and the Maca Vanilla Spice mixes were also very good. Everyday we make smoothies, and these blends have given us more energy! Reviews also say that overall their health improves too, such as healthy hair and skin.


Well, have a great weekend! Happy Independence Day!

"Pop"!

In honor of Father's ("Pop") Day, here are two popular treats for a poppin' fun party :)


Sweet and Spice Popcorn

1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp sugar
1/4 - 3/8 tsp chili powder
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp salt
dash cayenne, optional
2 cups plain popped popcorn

Mix seasonings and sugar in a med sized bowl. Add popcorn and oil, then mix until popcorn is coated with seasonings. Serves 2.

Lemon Maple Three Seed Mini Muffins

1 Tb poppy seeds
1 Tb hemp seeds
1 Tb pumpkin seeds
1 3/4 cup oats
1 Tb sugar
1 1/2 - 2 tsp lemon zest
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp allspice
2 1/2 cup flour, such as spelt or kamut
1 Tb baking powder
3 Tb lemon juice
1 1/2 Tb flaxmeal
3/4 cup non-dairy milk
3 Tb maple syrup
1/4 tsp maple extract (or vanilla)
2 Tb canola oil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Combine first 10 ingredients (poppy seeds through flour) in a large bowl. In a small bowl, add lemon juice and milk. Mix slightly, then add flaxmeal, maple syrup, maple extract, and canola oil. Combine wet ingredients into the large bowl with the dry ingredients, and mix until just combined. Drop batter into a prepared mini-muffin pan, and bake for 13-16 minutes for mini-sized muffins, or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Makes 12 mini-muffins, perfect size for parties.

And while you are having a party, why not watch Mary Poppins!



(Popcorn photo by Darren Hester)

Birthday Portland Excursion & Other Eats

It's been a while posting...partly because we've been getting burned out from 9-11 hour days at work. We had an especially bad day on Thursday June 18, which happened to be our 23 rd birthday. :(

Saturday was a wonderful day, though, hiking in Forest Park (the largest urban park in the USA), strolling through Portland's Pearl District (and stopping in at Storables, Powell's City of Books, and Whole Foods Market), and eating at Proper Eats Cafe! We had a wonderful refreshing hike followed by a fresh, healthy lunch. If you are ever in the area, you have to hike at Forest Park, it is so beautiful, scenic, lush, peaceful, and rejuvenating!

At Proper Eats, we shared a tabouli wrap with shredded beets, sauerkraut, spinach, and miso tahini sauce on a whole wheat tortilla, and a sample platter of raw crackers, raw veggies, sunseed avocado dip, hummus, and spicy black bean dip. For dessert, decadent Thai Chili Dark Chocolate Truffle and Peppermint Dark Chocolate Truffle! While the meals were very good, unique, and fresh, we felt like they weren't wow enough to get the next time. We really want to try their other dishes, because it was all so healthy, local, and vegan. The cafe is quaint and even has a small grocery store with local produce, bulk section, and vegan snacks.
Did we mention how much we LOVE our farmer's market? Last week we bought super sweet and fresh strawberries, zucchini, lettuce, bok choy, cucumber, and fresh aromatic basil.


Since we are behind in posting, here are some more delicious yet random eats to share with you!

Starting off the weekend with a fruit n' veggie smoothie, fresh sliced pears, and some Nature's Path Flax Waffles, drizzled with a little pear butter and maple syrup.









And, let's just skip to dessert! Vive le Vegan's Chocolate Chip Cookies!

We adapted them slightly (added in a little oats for texture, among other things), but overall these were the best chocolate chip cookies we've tried. Good texture, soft yet not too doughy or crumbly, whole grain, and very flavorful! This recipe can act as a base to be used to create other great cookies. Yummy :)


Using our huge farmer's market zucchini, we made zucchini hummus. This recipe came from our raw "cook"book (Raw Food Made Easy for 1-2 People), but our tahini was non-raw, so this hummus is semi-raw. The hummus has zucchini, tahini, garlic, a little cumin and paprika, and some salt just blended together. It is slightly thinner in consistency, but very tasty and unique. It is more than just hummus - it can be used as a creamy sauce, as a dip, or as a dressing, and you can change up the spices to create different flavors. We loved it especially over pasta (chilled or warm), fresh basil leaves, and veggies (in this case some sundried tomatoes).
So, celebrate this summer by buying fresh local produce, traveling/exploring new places, eating healthy delicious meals, and indulging in decadent desserts!

Portland is a great place to travel, with beautiful bridges, parks, shopping, and restaurants.


Have a nice week everyone! We will share some more product reviews soon.

Let us know what your favorite places/cities to travel are, because we love to travel!

Wishing good health and fun for June!

Sweet red strawberries are in season here!! We are excited that our local farmer's market has started up. Soon more berries will be plentiful, along with other great summer produce. Summer fruits and vegetables and sunny warm days means refreshing, light, nutritious, easy meals!

The local strawberries were delicious as is, but we also enjoyed them in a raw buckwheat porridge, sprinkled with a little raw wheat germ and hemp seeds.


We also enjoyed a light, healthy, refreshing, and creamy GREENS smoothie! Most of the green smoothies we have enjoyed (and need to make more often) include some or all of the following: bananas, greens, cucumbers, blueberries, non-dairy milks, hemp protein powder, spices, and other fruits and juices.

Any suggestions on how to make these smoothies WOW and change them up frequently would be greatly appreciated! We need some greens inspiration. Also, if you purchase or know of any high quality nutritious greens/fruit powder mixes, please let us know. We have been enjoying hemp protein powder, but once it is gone, we want to try an even healthier blend with greens and fruit in it, such as Amazing Grass brand. Has anyone ever tried this blend? Which greens brands do you recommend that have fresh, high-quality, low-sugar, natural and organic ingredients??


Another healthy alternative to fresh food is freeze-dried food! We love freeze dried peas to snack on - a healthy snack with a nice crunch. The freeze-dried mangos are delicious in cereal in the morning, and the freeze-dried edamames are a handy addition with dinner. We usually get freeze-dried peas, corn, fruit, and tomatoes from Just Tomatoes at our local grocery store, but we decided to buy from Harmony House Foods for different freeze-dried products. Unique freeze-dried or dehydrated products, like sweet potatoes, pears, green beans, etc.... The only thing we weren't crazy about was the kiwi - was really tart. They even have really good vegan vegetable soup mixes.We are overall thrilled at Oregon summers, so much more fun and refreshing than Texas' summers! It's wonderful to enjoy farmer's markets, Oregon landscape (coast, hills, forest, waterfalls, etc..) and to savor fresh nutritious foods!

As Hippocrates says, "A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessing." "He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything."-Unknown

P.S. We found this great website to be creative - wordle. Express yourself, your thoughts, your desires, your joys!

Happy June!

Hiking Fuel

Perfect for Memorial Day Weekend, we enjoyed a vigorous 1.5 hour hike at Silver Falls State Park, with our Dad. The park was packed - so many people enjoying the sunny weather and the gorgeous forested park!

We had a nice picnic in the sun - brought carrot sticks, oranges, pistachios, crackers, banana, and potato chips. Just various foods that are easy to transport and don't necessarily require refrigeration.

For fuel after or during the hike, we enjoyed homemade oatmeal banana bars and kamut muffins. We adapted this recipe for oatmeal snack bars and used dried bananas! For the kamut muffins, we followed the Triticale Breakfast Muffin recipe on the back of Bob's Red Mill's Triticale Cereal/Meal. Used all kamut flour and kamut cereal/meal, and it turned out excellent! A new favorite muffin that's not too sweet, to be eaten for breakfast or for snacks! Kamut gives a buttery-corny flavor, and in a biscuit kamut flour makes it taste buttery, and in this muffin recipe with the kamut meal, it tasted a little like cornbread muffins!

Kamut Muffins

1 cup Kamut cereal/meal
1 cup kamut flour
2 Tb sugar
1/2 tsp salt
>1 Tb baking powder
1 Tb flaxmeal
1 cup non-dairy milk (we used 1/2 rice, 1/2 soy)

Mix dry ingredients, then add liquid and mix until combined. Pour into prepared muffin tins and bake at 350 degrees F for 12-15 minutes for mini-muffins, or 15-20 for larger ones. We made 12 mini muffins.


Other hiking foods we like to have include:

cereal
biscuits
rice cakes
chips
dried fruit
soynuts
Just Tomatoes freeze-dried peas
Heart Thrives
bananas, apples


What are your favorite picnic foods and hiking snacks that are easy to transport and eat, and provide great fuel? There are alot of energy bars out there, but so many of them are full of junky ingredients, and we personally prefer homemade wholesome snacks.

Have a great Memorial Day!

Fresh Meals for an Active Day

It's already May, and we love that it's warmer outside with beautiful colorful flowers. Spring and especially summer always makes us feel so refreshed and eager to be active outside and also to eat healthy. We love fresh light healthy meals on a warmer sunny day. Here's some recent nutritious fresh meals that we have enjoyed!

Super-powered berry breakfast:
Soaked barley flakes with soy milk, raw flaxmeal, and antioxidant-rich sundried white mullberries and freeze-dried pomegranates. And, a creamy berry smoothie with frozen blueberries, bananas, and more soy milk.

Tart, fruity, and nutritious to rejuvenate us for the day!
Mullberries are very nutritious, full of antioxidants, iron and vitamin C. They taste like flowery dates, with hints of coconut and raisins.

Pomegranates are also nature's superfood, with high levels of vitamin C, potassium, and antioxidants.

What unique berry have you tried, and how do you incorporate more antioxidant-rich fruit in your diet?

Salsa Tofu Scramble:
With black beans, onion, bell pepper, tomatoes, and spices. When served with tortilla chips, steamed broccoli, and fresh tomato wedges, and eaten on the patio in the warm Oregon spring weather, this meal makes for a nice fiesta dinner!

Tofu is a great meat-alternative, filled with healthy soy protein, isoflavones, calcium, and iron.

Broccoli is one of the most nutritious vegetables, high in vitamin C, vitamin K, vitamin A, fiber, folate, and other nutrients. Like other cruciferous vegetables, it is powerful in flavonoids, especially anti-cancer phytonutrient sulforaphane and phytonutrient lutein.

What's your favorite dish to eat broccoli and tofu? What's a unique recipe you use that has soy/tofu?


Whole Grain Millet Bowl:
This tasty and nutritious meal was easy to make - cooked millet mixed with olives, tomatoes, chives, and extra virgin olive oil.

As a gluten-free whole grain, millet has a great nutty, buttery flavor with a texture between rice and couscous. It is a great way to incorporate more fiber and heart-healthy whole grains in one's diet, and is a good source of magnesium, phosphorus, manganese, and other nutrients.

Olives (and olive oil) is a great way to consume more healthy mono-unsaturated fats and polyphenols.

Which gluten-free grains do you enjoy, and how do you prepare them? What's your favorite brand of olive oil with the best flavor? We love trying different extra virgin olive oils to detect the various aromatic flavors.


Yay for May flowers and fresh eats!
P.S. For delectable eats, Ricki Heller has written Sweet Freedom, a cookbook of delicious vegan desserts. Check out her giveaway post for more information - you can have a chance to win a free copy of her new cookbook!