Adding Pumpkin

We like the idea of adding pumpkin to all kinds of foods. In quick breads and yeast breads, cookies, smoothies, puddings, ice creams, oatmeal, soups, and main dishes. This winter we've added pumpkin to a variety of foods and not only does pumpkin make the foods delicious but also nutritious!

We tried this pumpkin pie ice cream, but used all soy milk (no soy creamer), a little more pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spice, and added some frozen bananas. Made lots of ice cream! Deliciously spiced, and we read that adding arrowroot powder helps prevent ice crystals from forming.

Other creamy pumpkin treats of course include pumpkin banana yogurt smoothies and pumpkin puddings.

From our wonderful friends at Bob's Red Mill, we made Gingerbread using their Gingerbread Cake Mix, but instead of using eggs and oil, we used pumpkin puree, a little oil, and flax with water. So moist, spiced, and delicious! Will definetely make again. You could add some raisins or orange juice for a different variation.


Last weekend we went on a trip to Salem and to Lifesource Natural Foods, where we got some fresh squash pumpkin veggie soup. Warm and creamy for a cold day! Adding pumpkin to even a bowl of split pea soup is another great idea!

Another pumpkin hide-a-way --- in tofu scramble! We love tofu scrambles, and having pumpkin tofu scramble was no exception. Chewy tofu with creamy pumpkin. Yum! Added green bell peppers and onion, but other veggies like kale or broccoli would have been good.

So, we have a can of pumpkin ready to use for the coming week, and we are thinking of creamy curry sauce with cauliflower and veggies, pumpkin maple banana pancakes, and pumpkin vinaigrette broccoli. Get creative with pumpkin! - LK

Dad & First Vegan Thanksgiving

We've been blessed with a wonderful DAD to come visit us for Thanksgiving, now that we are miles away from our family down in Texas. And his visit couldn't have been more memorable! He always teaches us to smile, have fun, be patient, and to just enjoy life!He is so wonderful; he was even vegan for the full 3 days he was here! Now he won't keep it up (b/c he says it's hard to change habits and he still likes his meat), but he is so easy going and very supportive. He gave us so many compliments about our cooking - "Everything is soo flavorful", "Wow this is delicious", and "I don't want to go back home to bland boring food". He made us smile and light up each time he enjoyed our food. Thanksgiving was wonderful too in that it was our first full vegan Thanksgiving, because we cooked all the food! Anyways, as for the delicious food we've been having this past week...

Our Thanksgiving meal:
Danish Squash & Apple curry puree, Homemade Pecan Whole Wheat Bread, Walnut Pecan Patties with Herb Gravy, and Steamed Asparagus. Excellent!

For desert, German Chocolate Fudge and Apple Pie - both recipes are keepers! For the fudge we mixed coconut butter, cocoa powder, chopped pecans, rolled spelt flakes (or oats), and a tad bit of nut butter and agave. You can refrigerate it for a 'fudge' softer consistency, or freeze it for a firmer fudge. We finally made WHF's Apple tart, but adjusted it and made a walnut-pecan-pumpkin seed-buckwheat-date crust, omitted the raisins, and used apple pie spice. Wow the crust was so good, and we like this recipe b/c there is no margarine or oil!

For leftovers here are some ideas!

Roasted beets, carrots, and turnips with walnut pecan patties and pecan whole wheat bread




Winter Squash Apple Puree Soup with salad




Just simply bread and olive oil, or walnut pecan sandwich with gravy and squash - all the "fixin's"
FYI - if you have lots of leftover gravy, why not add it to rice dishes or ... even tamales!


For the remainder of Dad's visit, he loved the Thai Coconut Dish, the Creamy Lima Bean n' Beet Soup, the whole grain bagel-rolls, the coconut cinnamon roll muffins, and the fruit smoothies!
























The Cinnamon Roll Muffins are perhaps the best cinnamon rolls and muffin recipe we've ever made and tried! We were craving cinnamon rolls, but didn't want to be slaving in the kitchen for hours as we would for a usual cinnamon roll recipe. So we came up with these and they were a hit! Our dad loved them! So soft and moist and cinnamony and coconuty too. We'll post the recipe soon!

Hope you have a blessed Thanksgiving full of loving memories and tasty food. We love the holidays because it reminds us of our childhood, of wonderful smells from the kitchen, and especially of family.
And we are grateful for vegans & vegetarians and all of our readers! - LK Sisters

A Little More About Us

This past week we've made lots of healthy tasty meals, but we were unbelievably busy at work that we didn't take any pictures. We made a creamy pumpkin pasta dish made with large wheat shells, tofu/pumpkin 'ricotta' filling, onions, garlic, and marinara sauce. Delicious and made enough for 8 people! We also enjoyed burritos with homemade whole wheat tortillas, revised from the King Arthur Whole Grain cookbook.

Being apart of the Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA), by buying produce for the winter season from a local farmer, has been such a great opportunity. We absolutely love all the mixed greens and salad mixes - we have eaten so much more greens than we ever have! Here was a delicious salad with mixed salad greens and stripped sweet raw beets!


With chan dal beans from Bob's Red Mill, we cooked Channa Palak Masala from Happy Herbivore, though we changed it up just slightly. Love homemade soup out of the crockpot! So easy, filling, and warm on a cold wet day in Oregon.


Fall is all about pumpkin and winter squashes! We have such a craving for anything pumpkin/squash. Yummy pumpkin smoothie with bananas, and yummy pumpkin pudding!Veggie Delight recently tagged us to post more about us. So, here goes:

Link the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links. Let each person know that they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Here are the people we are going to tag (We're only tagging three):
Monique of The Happy Veganarian
Anni and Heikki of Tofu for Two
Swell Vegan

Facts about us:
1. In junior high and some of highschool, we played violin in the school orchestra, and we took German as our foreign language. We are very passionate about music - we enjoy listening to music and playing the piano, we liked the violin (but got burned out after a while), and we have a guitar sitting in a corner waiting to be learned how to play. We are also interested in culture - we traveled to Germany, we went on exchange for a year in college to New Hampshire, we like cultural foods, and our heritage is a mix of different cultures.

2. Krista is left handed and Lisa is right handed. We are "mirror" twins; even our first cavity was on opposite sides.


3. We like licorice and as children our grandparents would always give us black jelly beans for Easter. Right now we have licorice vegan mints and licorice flavored Nature's Gate toothpaste.

4. As children, we loved to make crafts, color, and be creative. We were very quiet, soft spoken girls who liked to just dive into a project, such as crocheting, making posters, coloring, creating ornaments, etc. Today we still love to work on projects. We make scrapbooks of our unique experiences, create recipe and prayer books, paint ceramics, and create collages to give as gifts to our family members (through websites such as shutterfly.com).

5. We each have a different favorite 'animal' - Lisa's is an elephant and Krista loves dolphins. We have lots of figurines and such of each. Of course, we love cats and dogs, especially our two felines, Emma and Noah!

6. We don't like spending lots, and try to conserve and be good spenders. Sometimes though we do spend alot on food because we like food so much, especially when we see new products or go to cool stores like Whole Foods and Bob's Red Mill.

7. We are followers of Christ and love going to mass every weekend! God is so much a part of us, and He's number one in our life. We love to collect crosses to hang around the house.

God bless! Lisa and Krista (LK Sisters)

Eyes, Bugs, Tornadoes!

Happy November! Since Halloween was yesterday, we wanted to get creative in the kitchen and have a "themed" meal. Easy but delicious...

... Black Eye Soup, slimy cucumber salad with bugs, and tornado and moon crescent rolls.



The Black Eye Soup was a variation of our Black Bean Soup, but we added a can of black eyed peas to have "eyes" in our soup. Pureed the black beans but not the black eyed peas.

For the cucumber salad, we just shredded a cucumber and added onion, currants, black pepper and some vinegar. It would be good with some other seasonings, but it was still refreshing and we enjoyed eating our slimy salad with black bugs!

Our Tornado and Moon Crescent Rolls were made with Bob's 10 Grain flour and carrot puree. We were hoping the carrots would make the rolls orange, but it just made it a darker golden brown. The carrot flavor though definetely stood out and made the crescents subtly carroty sweet. Yum!


We had so much fun carving a pumpkin (quite large one too!). The best part - roasting pumpkin seeds! We loved this garlicy cayenne addicting snack.


We are in the mood for comforting Autumn foods, so this morning we baked gingerbread raisin cookies. The recipe is from David's Pure Vegetarian Kitchen Cookbook that we checked out from the library. It is a great book so far with easy but tasty recipes that are quick to make and don't require much ingredients.

Another holiday treat we made last night was homemade "egg nog". In the Vitamix, we blended So Delicious Vanilla coconut milk yogurt, hemp milk, frozen bananas, nutmeg, and a dash of allspice. Turned out excellent!

Hope your November is off to a great start!

Today's All Saints Day, so here is a Bible verse in recognition of Saint Martha, the patron saint of servants and cooks.

“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness…” (Matthew 5:6a)

We should prepare our meals with love and be thankful for the food we have. We should serve others and ultimately seek nourishment from God.

- LK Sisters

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

Cooking Minimally

Lot's of good finds at the Farmer's Market and the local natural food store, but a challenge to cook this past week. Why? Because the darn movers haven't shown up yet - and all of our kitchen appliances and utensils are packed away. We do have a minimal amount of cooking essentials, which include one large skillet, one cutting board, cookie sheet, some knives, two wooden spoons, and small plastic plates and spoons. We are cooking only on the stove or in the oven (that includes reheating), and we do dishes constantly at every meal.

Hungry for oatmeal but without a pot or a microwave? It IS possible with a shallow skillet pan! Want Italian but have no pasta pot or strainer? Again, the shallow skillet pan works! We've discovered that the skillet pan is very multipurpose and handy!


Grains and Nuts Bob's Red Mill Hot Cereal - with bananas, dried cranberries, flaxmeal, cinnamon, agave, and a dash of almond milk. Ate breakfast this morning outside in the crisp air on our porch!






















Organic Tomato & Grilled Zucchini Spaghetti Sauce - with sauteed onions, garlic, yellow crookneck squash, drizzled with olive oil, and sprinkled with basil and oregano. Pasta shells were excellent (Delallo Organic Whole Wheat Shells) despite the minimal cooking technique in a skillet!

We were anticipating a tasty "fajita" meal with Tofurkey's Spicy Veggie tempeh that we bought at Whole Foods. Sauteed onions and purple bell pepper, avocado, and spicy Muir Glen Garlic Cilantro salsa tasted good; too bad we DISLIKED the tempeh! It tasted like bad cheese, and we never were cheese fans in the first place. We ended up only having a veggie fajita on these whole wheat flatbreads. We also had Jalapeno Hummus Tortilla Chips, made with stone ground corn.





At the local food store this week, we bought:


Vegetas' Jalapeno Hummus Tortilla chips (great crunch and whole grain nutty flavor, just not spicy or baked)
Lakewood Pure Mango Juice (our favorite brand of juices - fresh pressed instead of from concentrate)
Drew's Sesame Orange Dressing
Real Foods Multigrain Corn Thins (a thin rice cake with popcorn)
Bob's Red Mill Millet Grits
Bob's Red Mill Grains and Nuts
Santa Cruz Organic Apple Cherry Sauce
Artisana Raw Pecan Butter (which we absolutely love! Great with rice cakes, banana, in desserts, in smoothies, in cookies.)
purple cauliflower!


With our local "Canadian Harmony" variety of juicy peaches, we made a simple quick-n-easy Peach Crisp:
No-Fuss Peach Crisp
Homemade Granola
1 cup oats
~ 4 Tb agave, enough to coat all the oats
a pinch of sea salt
lots of cinnamon
sunflower seeds

Lay out oats on a cookie sheet, then add agave and mix thoroughly to coat. Mix in a little salt and lots of cinnamon. Spread out evenly over the sheet, then sprinkle sunflower seeds to your liking. Bake at 325F, checking/stirring frequently, until aromatic and lightly browned. Let cool to harden.

Warmed Peaches
4 large juicy ripe peaches, chopped

Put in a skillet and cook at med-heat until warmed and syrupy. Then serve with granola on top for a simple and healthy treat. Could also serve it with yogurt for a parfait.


Sometimes the simplest things are life's sweet pleasures. Kudos to the skillet and those green Preserve plastic plates!

...Quickies...

This post will be short, as we are pressed for time! We have so much to do before we leave tomorrow for Houston to attend a MercyMe concert with our dad, and then go to Oregon (Sunday to Wednesday) for job interviews at Betty Lou's! (Pray for us!). So quick rantings about our recent baking and cooking... (not necessarily quick to make)

We finally made the raw cinnamon rolls that everyone's been enjoying - and they were fabulous! Decadent, spiced, and nutty! We enjoy homemade cinnamon rolls, but those can take long to make, and even though these were no exception, they were well worth it.

We made an orange-cranberry variation, adding orange juice instead of water, adding orange zest in filling, and adding dried cranberries instead of raisins. Awesome orange frosting (almond butter, orange juice, and orange zest)! Very tasty, healthy, and filling. (Tip - drink lots of milk or water with it!) Made lots and froze them. Other variation ideas: maple date/fig with maple frosting; lemon blueberry; vanilla spice; chocolate.


We revisted an old recipe favorite - Thai Tofu Saute. Good flavors and better the next day! Awesome with broccolli, onion, bell peppers, but would be good with snap peas and cabbage. The sauce was really good and made lots. Yum! Served with quinoa.



More veggies... raw that is! We made raw zucchini spaghetti with raw marinara sauce. Marinara sauce included local fresh tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, onions, herbs, bell pepper, mushrooms, and spinach, all pureed (semi-chunky). Shredded a huge local zucchini - so good! It was a refreshing meal, but more like salsa and nothing like a good plate of spaghetti with veggie spaghetti sauce.


... will be back after our travels! LK

Mmm Creamy Delights

Don't you just love the feel of creamy-smooth foods in your mouth? How about soft-fluffy? And sweet-fudgey? And creamy-cooling?


Veganomicon's Pasta Della California was the perfect fresh summer meal, with lots of creamy-smooth avocado. Spiral wheat pasta with chopped broccoli, LOTS of garlic, lime zest and lime juice, spinach... and LOTS of creamy-smooth avocado to hit the spot! Will definetely make again!


Our soft-fluffy delight: Sweet Potato Yeast Bread. Instead of using canned pumpkin for Celine's Pumpkin Yeast Bread, we bought some canned sweet potato puree, added ingredients in our bread machine, and 3 hours later, enjoyed the best bread ever. Seriously! So soft and fluffy with a lovely sweet-potato flavor!

To use up the rest of the sweet potato puree, we made some sweet potato brownies (found recipe online). We underbaked them so much, that they turned out to be sweet potato fudge, but all the more decadent! Sweet and fudgey! We froze them so they would be fudgey yet somewhat firm. You can taste the sweet potato flavor, and it is quite rich. Always good to try new recipes and concoctions, though we think we'll stick to our fudge recipe and just make variations from that.


And we also made creamy ice cream - Strawberry Vanilla! A creamy-cooling treat.

Cheers, LK Sisters

RAWesome Foods

We've been attempting to eat more wholesome raw foods in our diet each week. Last week we had raw cashew mango cookies, and the week before we tried raw spinach zucchini lasagna. Well, we've had more RAWesome foods :)

For the fourth of July, we made Taco Lettuce Wraps. Most of it was raw, except the homemade bluecorn tortillas that we served with it. Our feast included...
... taco "meat", diced tomatoes, raw corn kernels, sliced avocado, cabbage leaves, and the tortillas (although for leftovers we had a truly raw meal with just the cabbage as our wrap). We got the taco "meat" recipe from a free magazine from the natural food store. Here's the recipe and our comments:

Taco Lettuce Wraps

2 cups walnuts, soaked (~ 1 1/2 hours)
2 Tbsp Braggs
2 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp cumin
1/2 Tbsp coriander
1 bunch cilantro (we didn't have any)

fresh corn kernals from 1-2 heads of corn
fresh tomatoes, diced
sliced avocado
cabbage heads

Process taco "meat" in a food processor until mixture resembles ground taco meat. Serve with remaining fresh veggies. Serves 8.

It was very tasty, healthy, and filling! We want to definitely have this again, but we brainstormed some other ideas - mix walnut meat with 1/2 quinoa for a lighter "meat"; make an Italian flare with herbs and balsamic; add a creamy dressing such as guacomole or agave mustard dressing; have it in a pita, or serve with other veggies such as cucumber, sprouts, salsa, shredded carrots, etc...



We also made Fresh Avocado and Cucumber Soup (also found this in a magazine).

Fresh Avocado and Cucumber Soup

1 cup soy or hemp milk
4 green onions, chopped
2 large avocados, cut into chunks
juice of 1/2 lime
1/4 tsp salt
1 and 1/2 large cucumbers, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro (we didn't have any)
black pepper
lots of cayenne

Puree all ingredients in a food processor and puree until well blended with a smooth consistency. Add pepper and adjust seasonings. Chill before serving.

It was fresh, cooling, easy, and healthy! We added ~ 2 Tbsp bell pepper, and we garnished with corn kernels and chives. It would be good with spinach or pureed cauliflower, or with tomatoes and Italian spices like basil.



With our fresh figs, we enjoyed Fresh Raw Fig Spread. Instead of heating the mixture, which is usually the technique when making jam, we just processed the figs to a thick paste with no cooking required.

Fresh Raw Fig Spread

~ 20 fresh figs (~ 1 lb)
1/8 cup water
1 lemon, juiced, optional
1/4-1/2 tsp brown sugar

Process in food processor until thick puree. Makes ~ 1 1/2 cups! So easy!

We used this on toast, for nut butter banana jam sandwiches, and in our oatmeal.

Lastly, we shopped at rawguru.com, and bought some great new "raw" finds! We've only tried the Mexican Flax Chips, which has a unique crunch (very good!) and a great tomato-Mexican flavor! We'll let you know how the other raw goodies turned out!


The goodies include: Lydia's Organics Apple Ginger Bar, Raspberry Bar, Tropical Mango Bar, Carob Hazelnut Bar, and Apple Fig Bar; Organic Golden Flaxseed Crackers, Mexican Harvest; Goldenberry Brazil Nut Cookie; Nature's Gift Raw Organic Pineapple Flax Cookie; Adam and Eve Dangerous Date Bar; and Gopal's Mexican Power Wrap.

Hope your summer is full of sunshine and good food! LK