It's a falafel kind of summer.

Steven has been on a falafel making kick this summer and boy, is it tasty! One night we decided to try to make a vegan tzatziki  with whatever I happened to have in the fridge. It turned out great. Even the dairy-eater loved it!

Vegan Tzatziki:
1/4 cup veganaise
1/4 cup tofutti cream cheese
A splash of unsweetened almond milk
1 clove of garlic, minced
Juice of 1 small lemon
2 sprigs of mint or dill, minced
2 small Persian cucumbers, shredded
Salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl until combined. Serve chilled.

We have been using orange mint and spearmint from our garden. So tasty!

We're Jamin'

We recently had a jam making party with our neighbor Steven.  It took all afternoon, well, all of a Sunday pretty much, to make the jam, but it was so fun!  There has been amazing strawberries and blueberries at the farmer's market lately, so we went Sunday morning and stocked up on tons of organic berries.

The Awesome Preserve Book!

I have to admit, I'm not very good at following recipes.  I always look up recipes and keep them nearby, but as we realized just how much fruit we had purchased, the less inclined we were to follow the outlined steps.  I have a great book on canning and preserving that my mom sent me (the Sunset Canning and Preserving Book).  After flipping through a bunch of the jam recipes, I realized they are all roughly the same: fruit, sugar, and maybe pectin.  Some recipes call for more sugar, less pectin, but it's all roughly the same.  So we figured, why not wing it.

Stirring the brew.

With that, we just started mashing combinations of berries and sugar in bowls.  We ended up with 5 variations total.  Once we had our mash ready, we put it on the stove to boil and added pectin.  I think we left them all for about 20 to 30 minutes at a slow boil, and when the mix seemed to be thickening up we did the cold plate gel test.  Steven put a few small plates in the freezer, and every so often, we would put a spoonful of jam on the plate.  Then it went back in the freezer for a minute or so, and if it didn't run back together when we put our finger in it then it was done.

All that was left was to fill the jars and seal them.  We filled quite a few jars with Strawberry Cinnamon, Old Fashioned Strawberry, Strawberry Blackberry, Strawberry Cherry, and Blueberry Cinnamon.  So yummy!

Steven with his Strawberry Cinnamon jars!

Last Night's Deliciousness

It's mostly raw too!

Strawberry Milkshake of Awesome!

Frozen Strawberries
Fresh Strawberries
Homemade Almond Milk
Agave Syrup

Blend, blend, blend.  Yummy!

Weekends are the best!

I'm really looking forward to this weekend, and hoping the weather will be sunny. Last weekend was filled with fun projects, and I hope to get more gardening done this weekend.

These little dudes are much bigger now and are begging to be put into the ground soon.


The window herb garden is coming along nicely as well. . .


We also started some more seeds in our mini greenhouse last weekend too. A few tiny pots each of celery, watermelon, chamomile, onion, carrots, and anise.


I had seen a number of small greenhouse/seed starter kits in various stores, and figured I could do the same thing at home. We saved the big plastic box from the spinach and put all our little pots in it. I peeked in this morning, and the chamomile pots had lots of little green dots in them. So excited!!



This yummy stuff will be ready this weekend as well. . .


For instructions on how to make seed pots, see here.
For more info making sauerkraut, see here or here.

Almond milk of Awesome.

I made it myself! It was really easy too. We just soaked our nuts (teehee).

Then we put them in the food processor, which we soon found out was not the ideal tool for the job.

(This was just before the water went everywhere!!!)

Instead, we put the water and almonds in a tall container and hit it with the immersion blender. It worked beautifully.

Then we poured it all into the pitcher lined with a mesh bag. Like so. . .


Then lift the bag out and squeeze all the milk out of the pulp. It's pretty awesome as is, but we decided to add a small amount of vanilla extract for extra awesome.

Delish!


For more tips and nut milk suggestions, see this awesome lady's post.

Easter Bunnies

There have been a lot of Easter bunnies hopping about lately. It started with a package from Derick's folks filled with all kinds of yummy chocolate goodies.
I also made Derick a basket with goodies for his road trip with Alan.

I didn't take a photo, but my mom also send us a bunch of Endangered Species chocolate bars!!

Saturday morning, Tara, Charlie, and I made invitations to the hunt.

Then the egg decorating began. . .


When Charlie went to work, Tara and I started making Birds Nest Cookies. We were inspired by Katie's cookies, and so we made the vegan version. Some eggs were made of Jordan Almonds and some had jelly beans!


Early this morning, Tara called to wake me up and offered to help make the rest of the snacks for today. We finished the Mini Tofu Quiches and made a great big fruit salad.


Then it was time for the egg hunt!


It was a lot of fun, and there were only a few casualties. . .

We bake monsters!

Delicious Dinner Time

So there's no photo of this one, but Derick and I made a yummy pasta dish for dinner on Sunday. We got a huge box of greens from the farmers market and cooked up some kale and beet greens with onions shiitake mushrooms and some Bragg's. We mixed this in with some penne pasta and tomato sauce, then mixed in some Daiya cheese and baked it for about 20 minutes in the oven. It was sooo yummy!

Raw Stuffed Portobello

Derick and I made this for dinner a while back and it was so tasty. We modified a couple of recipes from RAW: The UnCook Book to make it.

We made the marinated portobello recipe but left the mushrooms whole instead of dicing them, the following is my adapted recipe:

1/2 cup Nama Shoyu
1/2 cup water with 1/2 packet of miso soup mix
1/4 cup olive oil

Mixed together and left to marinade all day while I was at work.

Then we made the stuffing as follows, slight variation on Juliano's recipe:

1 cup corn
1 cup sprouted lentils
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup minced onion
1/4 cup minced celery
1/4 cup diced carrot
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon sea salt

Stuffed mushroom served with spinach and homegrown tomatoes and a blueberry vinaigrette. Yummy!

The Best Orange Juice

I wish I had some Uncle Matt's Orange Juice right now. I had some Odwalla, but it's not anywhere near the awesomeness that is Uncle Matt's.

The Secret

So, eventually I will post some recipes on here, but in the meantime, I'll share with you my favorite all purpose spice mix.

Nantucket Secret Spice


-Eggplant