Honey Ginger Cookies

I found this recipe on epicurious.com. I'm not much of a baker, but I have been craving something sweet for nearly a week and needed something to cure it!!

Ingredients

1 & 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

4 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup light honey

1 egg

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Whisk dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, ginger, and salt) together in a bowl. Set aside.
3. Cream butter and brown sugar together in a large bowl until smooth and fluffy.
4. Beat in the egg and honey until smooth.
5. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir well.
6. Spoon batter in heaping tablespoons onto an ungreased baking sheet, leaving 2 inches between cookies. These cookies spread quite a bit.
7. Bake for about 12 minutes, until golden brown. Let cool.

Notes

1. These cookies tasted really delicious, but the text was more cake-like than cookie-like. I would probably serve them with some whipped cream or icing. Or maybe as ice cream sandwiches!
2. The original recipe called for 1/4 cup of minced candied ginger, but I didn't have that so I substituted. Next time I might try it with the candied ginger.
3. Otherwise, these cookies were very light. The bottom and edges became a little crunchy (but not burnt) which was a nice contrast against the fluffy center.

Zucchetti

Here's a neat twist on pasta that raw foodists can enjoy too!! A friend of mine passed the idea onto me, but the sauce recipes are my own.

First of all - what is zucchetti? It's not as complicated as it sounds. It's a zucchini, shredded into long, thing, spaghetti-like strips. This is done using a little machine called a spiralizer.

So you put the zucchini onto the spiralizer, turn the crank, and voila! Zucchetti!

Now comes the fun part - picking the sauce. Rob and I have tried a few different recipes, some of them keeping with the raw food theme and some of them not. Here are a few that we've tried:

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

1/2 can of diced tomatoes, drained

1 clove of garlic, finely diced

6-10 grape tomatoes, halved

1 tsp basil

1 tsp oregano

2-3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Directions

1. Mix all ingredients together, adjusting amounts to taste.

2. Pour over zucchetti and toss until everything is coated.

Roasted Garlic Sauce

Ingredients

1 bulb of garlic

4 tbsp olive oil

1 shallot, finely diced

pepper

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Chop top of garlic bulb off and peel it down, leaving just enough skin to hold the cloves together.
3. Coat garlic in 1/2 tbsp of olive oil.
4. Wrap garlic in tin foil and roast in oven for about 45 minutes, or until garlic is soft.
5. Let cool.
6. Squish roasted garlic into a small dish, being sure not to let the garlic skin fall into the bowl.
7. Add olive oil, pepper, and shallots and mash well. (You may have to adjust the amount of olive oil or even add some balsamic vinegar... play around with it until it tastes good)
8. Toss with zucchetti and other diced vegetables.

Black Bean Sauce

Ingredients

1/4 cup of black beans, drained and rinsed

1 garlic clove, finely diced

3-4 tbsp olive oil

1-2 tbsp of vinegar (your preference)

1 tsp sugar

salt and pepper

Directions

1. Put beans into a small bowl and mash until smooth.
2. Stir in olive oil, garlic, vinegar, and sugar.
3. Season to taste.
4. Toss with zucchetti and other vegetables.

IMPORTANT!

There are a few general notes to take into consideration when making zucchetti.

1. Make your sauce first. The last thing you should make is the zucchetti itself. Zucchini gives off a lot of water, and if you shred it too early, it will give off water and make your sauce runny.
2. Do not over-salt! Salt causes vegetables to lose their water, and, as mentioned above, zucchini already gives off a lot of water. Salt will just add to this problem and make your zucchetti even more watery.
3. When making the sauces, be creative! Season everything to your taste. Throw extra ingredients in.
4. You can also put other vegetables through a spiralizer. If you get a good spiralizer, you can get it to shred at different thickness. If you use the wide blade to "spiralize" a potato, you get the perfect curly fry! If you use a slicing blade, it can slice vegetables and fruits super-thin. Slice some apples and bake at a low temperature in the oven to make delicious apple chips!

Anyway, I am certainly getting good use out of my spiralizer. It's a great investment, and it can make some pretty fancy and healthy dishes!

Veggie Broth

My Grandma Stella recently gave me a slow cooker, and I've been dying to use it. So when my mom mentioned that she had made her own veggie broth, I knew I had found a way to use my newly acquired appliance!

Over the past few weeks, I have been saving scraps of veggies - the end of a head of lettuce, the stumps of carrots and onions, pieces of sweet potato, and so on - and keeping them in the freezer. Finally I had enough to make broth.

I simply put all of the veggies into my slow cooker, covered them with water, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and dried thyme. I also added a crushed garlic clove.

I set the dial to high and checked it periodically. It's been three hours and it's still going. I've been adjusting the seasoning as necessary.

I can't really give you an appropriate cooking time... It depends on how many veggies you have and what kind... But just keep an eye on it and keep tasting - you'll know when it's right!!

Alternately, if you don't have a slow cooker, you can do it in a pot on the stove. It will cook faster that way. Bring it to a boil and reduce to a simmer for at least 30 minutes.

Once it's done, you can freeze it into an ice cube tray or measure it into 1 or 2 cup portions and freeze it in a plastic container.

Chickpea Potato Curry

Rob is away and has the car, and I've been really busy, so I haven't been able to go grocery shopping. So this afternoon I had to look at what I had in the fridge and cupboards and think about what I could make with it. I googled what I had an voila! This recipe came up.

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups veggie broth

2 cans of chickpeas

1 can of tomatoes with chilis

6 baby Yukon potatoes, chopped into cubes

1 medium onion, diced

1 tbsp unsalted butter

2 tsp minced ginger

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Directions

1. Add ingredients to pot and stir well.
2. Simmer on medium heat for 35-40 minutes

Notes

Well, there were a few things I had to change.

1. I only had one can of chickpeas, so instead of a 2nd can, I used a cup of frozen peas.

2. I didn't have any potatoes, only a sweet potato. So I used that instead.

3. I didn't have canned tomatoes with chilis, just a can of diced tomatoes. So I used that and added a few dashes of hot sauce.

4. I didn't have ground coriander.

Aside from not having exactly the same ingredients as the recipe called for, this turned out great. I made some rice to go along with it and really enjoyed it! Admittedly, I might have made it a bit too spicy for my tastes, but it was still delicious!

Baked Panzerottis

This recipe is from the Food Network show Eat, Shrink, and Be Merry. The idea of the show is that they take unhealthy foods and make them healthy. Rob and I both often have pizza cravings, and I was hoping this recipe would satisfy those cravings and save us some money!

Ingredients

Dough:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

2 tbsp of ground flaxseed (I used whole flaxseed)

1 envelope of quick-rise yeast

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 warm water

2 tsp olive oil

2 tsp honey

1 egg, lightly beaten (to coat the dough before baking)

Sauce:

2 tsp olive oil

1/2 cup minced onion

2 tsp minced garlic

2 cups plain, low-sodium tomato sauce

1 small can of tomato paste

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp balsamic vinegar

1 tsp honey

salt and pepper to taste

**You could just buy a jar of pizza sauce instead of making your own if you'd like. I won't judge.**

Filling:

The recipe uses ground turkey and turkey sausage. We wanted to make our panzerotti vegetarian, so we use the following:

1 can of diced pineapple, drained and squeezed (too much pineapple juice will make a soggy panzerotti)

1/2 green pepper, shopped

5-6 white button mushrooms, sliced

1 cup of shredded cheese (we bought a pre-shredded Italian blend)

Directions

Dough:

1. Mix dry ingredients well in a large mixing bowl.
2. In measuring cup, mix water, honey, and olive oil.
3. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon.
4. Tip onto a flour surface and knead for 2 minutes.
5. Lightly grease a bowl with olive oil. Place dough in bowl and cover. Let rise for 15-20 minutes, until double in size.

Sauce:

1. Saute onions and garlic in a pot with olive oil until onions are soft.
2. Add in remaining ingredients and stir well.
3. Let simmer on medium heat for 15 minutes.

Okay, so now for the assembly!

1. On a piece of parchment paper or a lightly floured surface, roll dough into a large rectangle, about the size of the cookie sheet that you will bake the panzerotti on.
2. Transfer dough to a floured cookie sheet.
3. Spread 1/3 of the sauce down the centre portion of the dough, leaving 3 to 4 inches on each side.
4. Spread some cheese on the sauced area.
5. Spread fillings and top with remaining cheese.
6. Down each side of the dough, cut 8 strips that you can "braid" over the sauce and fillings.
7. Take a strip from one side and fold it over the fillings. Repeat on the other side. Alternate sides until you've braided the dough. It should look like a giant strudel.
8. Be sure to seal the ends of the panzerotti so the sauce doesn't leak out.
9. Brush the dough with the lightly beaten egg.
10. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes, until golden brown.
11. Serve with remaining tomato sauce for dipping.

This was a great recipe... a little time consuming, but still delicious. Next time I would buy sauce instead of making my own, in order to cut down on the prep.

Mushroom Pot Pies

One of Rob's favourite meals (pre-vegetarianism) was pot pies. However, since he's turned vegetarian he hasn't been able to eat them, since most contain meat. So I decided to make some veggie-friendly pot pies!

I cheated a bit on the crusts and bought Pilsbury's pre-made pie crusts. They come in little packages containing two flat circles of pie dough, so I bought two packages of pie crusts.

I bought a package of 6" tin pie plates from the baking aisle of our local grocery store and greased them lightly. Then I unrolled the pie crusts and cut them into circles to fit into the pie plates. I was able to cut out 14 circles from the two packages of dough that I bought. I lined 7 pie plates with the dough, and reserved the remaining 7 circles for the top crusts of the pie. We'll get back to those later. Now for the filling!

Ingredients

• 6 tbsp margarine
• 10-12 white mushrooms, sliced
• 10-12 cremini mushrooms, sliced
• 5 portabella mushroom caps, sliced
• 4 potatoes, diced
• 3 stalks celery, diced
• 1 medium white onion, diced
• 2 shallots, diced
• 1 tbsp dried thyme
• 1/4 cup flour
• 2 cups of veggie broth
• 1 cup frozen peas
• salt and pepper

Directions

1. Melt 2 tbsp butter in a large saucepan on medium heat.
2. Add mushrooms and stir until juices are released.
3. Add potatoes, reduce heat, and cover until potatoes are softened.
4. Pour mushroom/potato mixture into a bowl and set aside.
5. Increase heat to medium and add remaining butter to pot.
6. Add celery, onion, shallots, and thyme, cooking until the onions are soft.
7. Add in flour and stir constantly until blended, about 2-3 minutes.
8. Slowly add broth, whisking consistently as you pour so that you make a nice thick gravy. **The mixture should be thicker than soup so that it doesn't leak out of the pie shells, but still with some fluidity to it (Not so thick that it will taste pasty in your mouth). Add more flour or broth as needed to get the desired consistency, whisking as you do so.
9. Add in potato/mushroom mixture and peas.
10. Season with salt and pepper.

Now for the assembly!!

1. Ladle mushroom stew into tart shells - just enough to fill (but not overfill) the pies.
2. Top each pie with remaining dough circles, pinching around the edges. to seal the pie shut.
3. Cut 2 or 3 slits in the top of the pie, to let steam out while baking.
4. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 45-50 minutes, until crust is golden brown.

If you want to freeze your extra pies, set the completed pies on a baking tray and put in the freezer. Once they're frozen, wrap in plastic wrap and stack in the freezer. To cook from frozen, preheat oven to 350-375 degrees and bake for 1 hour or until crust is golden brown.

You can also add whatever other veggies you'd like to the pie - carrots, corn... whatever! You could also try a different mixture of spices - maybe add some crushed rosemary or sage... or both!!

These pies are really rich and hearty and incredibly delicious! A nice substitute for meat pies!

Easy Vegetarian Chili

This is a recipe I came up with a few years back, and is something I have made consistently each winter. This recipe makes a huge batch, probably about 6-8 servings worth of chili. But it freezes well and makes for the perfect meal after a cold winter day. Forgive me if the measurements of spices aren't just exact. I usually just throw spices in until it tastes good, and I would recommend you do the same.

Ingredients

2 cans of diced tomatoes

1 can of tomato paste

1 can of red kidney beans, drained and rinsed

1 can of white kidney beans, drained and rinsed

1 green pepper, seeded and chopped roughly

1 or 2 fresh tomatoes, roughly chopped

1/2 of a medium sized onion, roughly chopped

6-8 white button mushrooms, roughly chopped

1 tbsp of minced garlic (about 2-3 cloves)

A pinch of dried chili flakes

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1-2 tbsp chili powder (or more, depending on how spicy you like it)

salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. In a large pot, add the diced tomatoes and tomato paste. Stir until blended.
2. Add the vegetables and garlic. Stir.
3. Add the cayenne pepper, chili flakes, chili powder, and salt and pepper. Stir until nicely blended.
4. Simmer over medium heat for at least an hour, until green peppers are soft and the chili is a deep red colour.
5. Serve!!

Also, you can always start low on the spice level, and add more spices as you go along. I like to taste the chili as it's simmering, and I add spices as needed.

To freeze, separate 1-serving portions into Tupperware containers. Put into fridge to cool and then transfer to freezer (this helps reduce freezer burn). To defrost frozen chili, either use the microwave or put into a pot and heat gradually. Whatever you prefer.

Enjoy!