Posts Tagged peanut butter

VeganMoFo: Celebrations

September 23, 2013 at 3:59 pm · Filed under Food ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This is my 300th post!  To celebrate, I figured I’d show you some celebration food.

St. Patrick’s Day – corned beef seitan, spinach potato patties, soda bread, a shamrock shake made with avocado and mint, and Guinness Extra Stout.  Guinness Extra Stout distributed in the US is vegan!

Cinco de Mayo – ground “beef” tacos with guacamole, rice and beans.

Valentine’s Day – Chocolate Covered Katie’s Snickerdoodle Blondies cut into cute little heart shapes.

Easter – homemade peanut butter cups.  I was going to make eggs but Michael’s was out of egg-shaped molds, so hearts it was!  The filling was 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter mixed with 2 teaspoons melted Earth Balance and 1/2 cup powdered sugar.  The coating was a 12 ounce bag of chocolate chips melted with 1 Tablespoon coconut oil.  The cups had a really good texture, but you could taste the coconut oil a bit, so I’d reduce it next time.

all packed up for shipping

I made the Ultimate Vegan Brownies from veganbaking.net to send to my mom for her birthday.  There are a few steps to the recipe, but it’s so worth it – they are by far the best vegan brownies I’ve ever had.  They’re the perfect mixture of fudgey and cakey and crumbly, and even have the desirable crunchy top.

We went to a San Francisco Giants tailgate for Dave’s cousin’s birthday, so I brought cupcakes – yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting and white and orange sprinkles for the Giants fans.

I’m not a horseracing fan, but Dave and some of our friends are, so we had a little gathering for the Kentucky Derby.  I made Wolffie’s Derby Pie from La Dolce Vegan.  The filling starts as something like a dough, with flour, margarine, sugar and flax seeds, which you then combine with chocolate chips and walnuts.  It’s probably one of the richest things I’ve ever made, and so delicious.

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Clean-Out-The-Fridge Stirfry with Sweet & Sour Peanut Sauce

June 3, 2008 at 10:08 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , ,

I don’t want to buy any more food until the farmers market tomorrow, so today I mulled over the assortment of stray veggies in the fridge.  I had an idea for a sauce that I thought could pull together the eggplant, carrot, celery, kale and basil, and it worked out nicely.

First I dragged out the crinkle cutter and got all fancy.

veggies

I served the stirfry over white rice (was out of brown) and topped it with the peanut sauce, basil and toasted peanuts.  Be careful if you try to toast peanuts, people!  They burn quickly.

stirfry

Granted, the flavor combo of this meal was interesting.  I probably wouldn’t make it again unless faced with the same ingredients.  The whole point was to coat everything in the sauce, which was really tasty.

Sweet & Sour Peanut Sauce

1/4 cup peanut butter
3 Tbs peach or apricot jam
2 Tbs rice vinegar
2 tsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp hot sauce
2 Tbs water

Whisk together all ingredients.

Makes 2-3 servings.

 

I almost forgot!  Most of the blogosphere has done the “share 5 things about yourself” taggy thing, so I figure I’ll tell you fine readers a bit about me.  My one passion other than food is music.  I was the highest ranking officer in the high school band (nerd alert!) and I have a bachelor’s degree in music performance.  I’ve sang and played in a few punk and ska bands – trumpet, guitar, bass and even a little drumming.  I took a year of drum lessons in college as my “minor” instrument and that was pretty awesome.  I even performed a four mallet marimba solo in front of the whole percussion studio!

In the past couple years I haven’t done much musically.  I’m the kind of writer that music has to “come to”.  I can’t just sit down and write.  So when it’s not coming, I’m not writing.  It also doesn’t help me musically that I’m in a happy relationship, I’m much more prolific when sad and lonely.  Although that’s a trade I’m willing to take.  I’m technically still in a band, but two members live down in Tampa and have busy adult jobs so we don’t get together very often.

Today while walking home from the bus stop I was reading Diary by Chuck Palahniuk, a part about how artists are inspired and how each piece of work regardless of the subject is a representation of the artist themself.  Being Palahniuk, the inspirations were pain and disease and other weird stuff, but it got me to thinking that I’d like to get creative and put out a representation of myself.  I then decided to try to compose a piece for piano, which is not my standard medium.  I took many years of piano lessons as a child, but am currently a very mediocre player at best.  I stopped reading and just walked for a moment, and a tune popped into my head, so when I got home I sat down, worked out the chords and notated it.  I worked on it a bit more after dinner, and took a picture to commemorate how nice it is to be creative.  I’m not sure what I’ll do with this piece if I finish it, but for now it’s good to have a new project.

piano

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