Dear readers,
Exciting news: It’s time for Vegan MoFo!
Throughout the month of October, over 700 vegan food bloggers will display their art and get knee-deep into some vegan cooking, baking and writing. I am excited to participate this year. It’ll be a great motivation to try out more new recipes. This is the perfect time of the year to this as well- the leaves are turning yellow and it’s becoming cold outside…
Next thing: picture of my lunch!
I live in a coop, so part of the deal to live here is to do 3 hours of kitchen work a week. And I love it! In the short time I’ve lived here, I’ve already learned so much about cooking, using the right kitchen utensils, which flavours work well together etc. And I get to make awesome vegan things – and eat them 🙂 Here is my lunch from yesterday:
What’s in it?
- Eggless “Egg”-Salad
- Barley-Chickpea Salad
- Spicy Hummous: Tabasco & Pepper
- Classic Hummous: Tahini
- Carrot sticks!
The Barley-chickpea salad was my favourite. I don’t remember the exact recipe, but I’ll try and remember as best as I can:
- Cook 1.5 cups of barley
- In a bowl, throw together a can of chickpeas, some cut up spring onion, some fresh parsley, juice of a lemon.
- Add some extras. These could be: dried raisins, cranberries, pistachios*, dried apricots. I also used sun-dried tomatos because I love them, worked out well.
- When the barley is tender, spread it out on a flat pan. Drizzle some olive oil over it and let it sit for a little bit.
- Put together a spice mix of black pepper, cinnamon, cayenne, nutmeg, turmeric. This is where my memory gets fuzzy. There may have been more spices. I also left out the turmeric because we didn’t have any, and it worked out well!
- Mix the barley with the rest of salad.
- Throw the spice mix in and stir.
- Let it sit for about an hour before serving. Maybe drizzle more olive oil on if it seems dry.
- Enjoy!
(*The recipe is originally a barley-pistaccio salad, but we always leave nuts out of all recipes in the coop kitchen for those who are allergic.)
The best thing was that I made all of the above and then knew they were being diminished by fellow coop-ers at lunch. Yay – vegan food for everyone!
Lastly, I tried out the raw pumpkin butter recipe from Raw Is Sexy last night. I used this baby:
I still had it sitting on my counter from the visit to the Farmer’s Market the other day. I knew it was time to try this…
This is what it turned out as: Yummy raw, cinnamon-y pumpkin goodness! I spread some on a sandwich and digged in right away. The rest is sitting in the fridge now.
Any ideas on what I could with it? Mix in some muffins? Make pumpkin bread out of it?
Lastly, I want to point you guys to some awesome vegan blogs I’ve discovered through vegan mofo already. For the complete list, check here:
- zombie cats eating plants (Awesome name much?)
- vegan culinary crusade
- 3 and 1/2 vegans (cute new blog about a vegan family)
- barefoot and frolicking (beautiful pictures!)
- and lastly: xgfx (vegan AND gluten-free AND awesome recipes!)
To the above and all the other mofo-ers: What is your goal for Vegan MoFo 2011?
I am mainly hoping to have fun, explore some new vegan recipes (particularly soup! I haven’t made much soup yet at all but the season is calling for it), and find more vegan bloggers I like 🙂
Have a nice Sunday everyone!
vegansmarties 