Lizlivingvegan's Blog

My parents came into town this weekend, to visit me, my brother & my sister in law. It’s so much fun having my family in town, so I’m glad they were willing to make the 8 hour drive! Last night, we went to Edo Squid, a local Richmond restaurant that is known for delicious Italian food! I hadn’t been there since my birthday, but we decided to go last night. Here was my delish vegan dish:

It was amazing, and the plate was huge! I only ate about half, and I was full the rest of the night!

This morning I woke up with a craving for something sweet… and I was pretty excited to discover that I had an almost empty peanut butter jar in the fridge… (note, there is a big difference between empty and almost empty.) It was definitely a morning for some PB & Banana “Ice Cream”. I’m sure you’ve seen similar recipes, but here’s what went into mine:

PB & Banana Ice Cream

• 1 medium frozen banana
• 6 frozen cubes of soymilk + a splash of non frozen soymilk
• 1 packet of truvia
• 1 tbs peanut flour
• 1/4 tsp guar gum (optional)
• 1/8 tsp xanthan gum (optional)

Throw it all in your blender (or Vita-mix!) and blend until creamy! If you don’t have a Vita-Mix, you might want to slice your banana before freezing, to be a little kinder to your blender blades!) Check out the nutritionals of this ice cream! Keep in mind, it makes a pretty big bowl! I recommend this with some peanut butter on top, or.. out of an almost empty Better’n Peanut Butter jar.

It pretty much made my morning 🙂 There may have also been some kiwi snacking:

Am I the only one that eats kiwi with the skin on? Don’t ask me why I was using a plastic knife to cut this. Needless to say, it didn’t work that well.

Right now, the family is watching football and eating chili. I’ve been snacking on my sister-in-law’s AMAZING guacamole. Yummy!

What is your favorite football (or weekend afternoon) snack?

Ok so I’ve been overwhelmed with all of these amazing fall recipes. I wish I had time to try them all!!! I’ve been on a pumpkin kick lately, but it was time to return to an old favorite, the butternut squash. Normally, I just slice it up and bake it for a super easy one ingredient (ok, 2 if you count salt) dinner… but I had half a squash in the fridge, and was in the mood to try something new.

Thankfully, I came across this lovely recipe for Butternut Squash Butter from Eat Live Run yesterday. Let me just say, this was FANTASTIC! I have to admit, I was a  little skeptical at first. Squash butter? But I had squash ready to be used, I happened to have all the other ingredients, so I thought, why not give it a try!

I roasted my squash:

And then threw it into the Vita-Mix with the rest of the ingredients

I’m always looking for an excuse to use my favorite kitchen appliance! (Thanks again, Mom & Dad!)

This turned out fantastic! My friend came over about an hour after I made this it went like this:

Me: “Sorry, my apartment still smells like squash, I made squash butter”
Him: “Squash butter? That sounds gross” (I leave the room, he opens the fridge. I return to the room, seeing him with my fresh jar of squash butter)
Him: “Wow…I was wrong… this smells REALLY good…”

Haha, you shouldn’t judge food by it’s name! It sounds funny, but this spread is my new favorite fall condiment! Thanks for the recipe, Jenna!

I enjoyed some of it on my toast this morning 🙂

What’s your favorite kind of *butter*? Apple butter? Nut butters? Squash butter?

-LLV

Ok, so it’s not a serious question (although I suppose some animal crackers could have dairy in them…) but it was a question raised while munching on some delicious trail mix. Why trail mix? Oh, because I went camping!!

If you know me, you probably know that I’m not exactly the camping type, and this was actually my first camping adventure! It was only for one night, and I’m pleased to say it was quite a success! And in case I wasn’t already loving fall, there was some awesome leaf-changing action going on…

Other than a brief “Oh-my-gosh-what-was-that-noise-are-we-about-to-be-bear-food” moment in the middle of the night, (um, sorry Emily & Brett…) the camping was awesome! Lots of hiking and relaxing by the campfire. Oh, and my wonderful camping companions brought supplies for a vegan dinner!! We had a mix of rice, red beans, red pepper, and onions, all wrapped in a tortilla. YUM! Highly recommended. 🙂

Oh! And for the recipe I didn’t post last time! Although the Chocolate Espresso Cookies were a fail, these double chocolate chip cookies most certainly were not!

I was searching around for a chocolate cookie recipe, when I found this one on the Post Punk Kitchen’s blog. Vegan or not, there are tons of great recipes on this site!

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup canola oil
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon whole flax seeds
• 1/2 cup soymilk
• 2 cups all purp flour
• 3/4 cup dutch processed cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 F.

Grind the flax seeds on high in a blender until they become a powder. This turned out to be harder than I thought it would be. Even with my amazing Vita-Mix, I found it to be tricky. I’d recommend blending  a whole cup of flaxseeds, and then just measuring out what you need and saving the rest for later. The seem to blend better that way. Anyways, then add soymilk and blend for another 30 seconds or so. Set aside.
In a large bowl sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. In a seperate large bowl cream together oil and sugar. Add the flax seed/soy milk mixture and mix well. Add the vanilla.

Fold in the dry ingredients in batches. When it starts to get too stiff to mix with a spatula, use your hands until a nice stiff dough forms. Add the chocolate chips and mix with your hands again.

Roll dough into 1 inch balls and flatten into a disc that’s about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet about an inch apart.

Bake for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool for about 5 minutes, then set them on a wire rack to cool completely.

This was my first time using flaxseeds as an egg replacer, and it went MUCH better than using the Ener-g egg stuff in that last recipe…Have you guys ever tried using flaxseeds as an egg replacer?

These were chewy and soft, and they didn’t spread all weird like those other cookies. I’m happy to report another success!

On my camping trip, I started reading the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. So far it’s interesting, and when I finish, I’ll give a full review! Any other interesting books you guys recommend?

-LLV

I’ve been in a baking mood lately, so I tried out a couple of new recipes. The first is perfect for fall! Here’s what I used:

Gingerbread Cookies

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• ¼ cup + 1 Tablespoon margarine (I use Earth Balance)
• ¼ cup + 1 Tablespoon pumpkin
• ¾ cup molasses
• 1 ½ teaspoons ginger powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¾ teaspoon cinnamon
• ¾ teaspoon nutmeg

1)Preheat oven to 350F (177C).  In a medium size bowl whisk together the all-purpose flour and baking soda.  Set aside.

2) In another medium size bowl mix together the sugar, margarine, pumpkin purée, molasses, ginger powder, salt, vanilla extract, cinnamon, and nutmeg

3)Pour half of the flour into the bowl containing the wet ingredients and mix with a spoon until well incorporated.  Pour the other half of the flour and mix with with a spoon until well incorporated.  It’s normal for the dough to feel really thick at this point and you may have to mix with your hands.

4) Roll into balls, and flatten slightly, since these cookies don’t really spread much! Bake for about 15 minutes. Let them cool, and then enjoy!

As you can see, when you shape them with your hand, your hands get a bit sticky! 🙂

For my next recipe, I used flaxseeds as an egg replacer… but I’ll save that for my next post! Hope you’re all enjoying the weekend!

-LLV