Oat Cheese Recipe

I like the original recipe for oat cheese. 
But this is better.
I added a healthy dose of fermented okara for texture and got a smooth, creamier textured product with a tangy flavor sans the lemon juice and tahini in the original recipe. I also use less water than the original recipe and leave out the cornstarch.

It softens when you heat it and makes a very convincing  vegan grilled cheese sandwich.
Stir into cooked pasta, put bread crumbs on top and bake 20 minutes for vegan mac n cheese.
Slice and layer in a vegan lasagna.
Freeze and grate over vegan pizza before baking.
Heat and add chopped jalapeño; pour over chips for vegan nachos

Put in blender carafe:
1/2 cup fermented okara paste
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup (or less) nutritional yeast
1 tbs paprika
2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp salt (or less)
1 cup water.
Blend until super smooth.
Pour mixture into a saucepan over med heat.
add 1 cup water to blender carafe to rinse the blender and pour that in the saucepan, too (no waste).
Simmer, stirring constantly until very thick and holds it's shape. 10-15 minutes or longer.
Pour into mold and chill.
Turn out for slicing, freeze for grating, spoon for sauces.

Chillin' in the loaf pan. 

Festive Cranberry Sauce Recipe

It's getting to be that time of year again.

No matter what you call it, families will get together and celebrate and that means big family meals.
This 4-ingredient vegan cranberry sauce is made days in advance and waits patiently for your holiday dinner convenience. Leftovers? There probably won't be any but if there are this sauce is very thick and doubles as jam for your toast or biscuit. A couple of tablespoons go a long way to flavor soups, sauces and smoothies. Try a scoop in your oatmeal, you won't regret it.

Festive Cranberry Sauce

12 oz cranberries, separated 10 oz and 2 0z
1 orange, deseeded
2 cups water in large pan
1 cup organic evaporated cane sugar

Bring water and sugar to a boil in a large pot while you

Puree in food processor 10 oz of fresh cranberries and one whole orange (including the peel) cut in quarters. Remove any seeds and thick white pith from the orange if need be.

Add puree and whole berries to the boiling sugar mixture and reduce heat, keep it bubbly.
Stir constantly until it reduces by 1/3. Be careful, the spatters can burn very badly.

Pour into a large jar, cover and cool. Refrigerate for two days and serve.










Happy Holidays and Stay Vegan :)

Toast Your Own::How to Make Curry Powder

Curry is a favorite around here. Of course, I don't like to use pre-made curry powder. You know me. I like to make my own so I know exactly what's in it and I can control the flavor, heat, bitter and sweetness.
Batch to batch, the spices change, the amounts change but this is the general recipe I use for my homemade curry powder.
This is a recipe has a mild heat. The cayenne used is 90,000 SHU. Your heat may vary.

Whole spices:
2 tsp coriander seed
2 tbs cumin seed
1 tsp fenugreek seed
1 tsp fennel seed
1 tsp whole white pepper
1 tsp crushed red pepper


Ground spices:
1 tbs paprika
1/8 tsp cayenne
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tbs turmeric
1 tbs mustard seed powder

1/2 tsp hing (asafetida powder) (don't toast)

Toast* all whole spices until smoky and fragrant.
Let cool
Grind to a powder and place in jar.
Toast all ground spices,
Let cool and place in jar.
Add untoasted hing
Mix well and store cooled product in airtight container.

Makes approximately 1/2 cup of curry powder.

*How to toast spices:


Heat dry saucepan or skillet on med heat.

Place seeds or powder in pan and stir or shake until they begin to turn dark and emit smoke.



Once spices begin to release a perfume-y, smoke-y scent remove from heat and allow to cool.

Take care not to burn the seeds.

Product Review: Gladrags & the Mooncup

Like many people I want to lessen my waste output. So I make a conscious effort to reduce the amount of disposable and one use plastic and paper products and packaging I consume.
Then I heard this:

(from gladrags.com) "If you menstruate 340 times in your lifetime, using 20 disposables per period, that amounts to 6800 pads or tampons thrown away. Now consider all the women using disposables in the world. If 500 million women use disposables throughout their lifetime, that's 3.4 trillion pads or tampons thrown away! Not only is landfill space taken up, but these materials cannot be reused and are no longer part of the resources available to us. Then, of course, there's all that packaging, (wrappers, boxes, applicators) that are also thrown away, all the garbage bags used, all the fuel used to truck those products to the stores week in and week out. Using GladRags for even a portion of your cycle makes a difference!"

What? My period is wasteful? Dang. It's so obvious when I think about it.
And then I thought about this:
I want to spend less money. Times are tight. Everyone wants to save a buck. We've cut out some unneccesary stuff but then I realized that at $5 a month for disposables, about one box of tampons and half a box of pads, for 5 years, hm, 12 x 5, carry the 1, that's $60 bucks a year! They say that well cared for Gladrags menstrual pads and the Mooncup can last even longer than 5 years and after seeing and using them, I believe it.

No adhesive. The wings snap securely around the crotch of your undies.

One cup and a couple of pantyliners is all I needed for my whole cycle!

Choosing disposable pad and tampons means a monthly expense of between $5 and $25 for every woman. Over the course of her menstrual life disposables costs the average woman more than $5,000. By comparison, reusable alternatives give years of protection for a fraction of that cost. If you buy a set of 2 GladRags pantyliners and a Mooncup at a cost of $50, that kit (compared to the price of disposables) will pay for it self in 10 months or less and last 5 years or more.

I want to ease the chemical burden that living on this planet causes in my body and the chemical burden my living places on the planet. In our society there is no way to live without producing waste. There is only so much you can eliminate and still function efficiently. Adopting reusable menstrual protection products into your routine is one big way to reduce the amount of toxins you take into your body and reduce the amount of toxins realeased in to our waterways through paper and plastic production and disposal.

My Anecdote:
I entered 2 internet giveaways last month. One for a Mooncup and one for a set of Gladrags pantyliners. I won them both. Yeah, I couldn't believe it either!
Anyway, for my last period I used the Mooncup w GladRags panty-liners to back it up. It took a couple of tries to get the cup placed right but once I got the hang it was amazingly, life-changing-ly wonderful.
I had a heavy flow last month and did leak but only because I forgot about it and it over filled (It's THAT comfortable). Fortunately the panty liner was enough to catch it. It's my recommendation that a cup and two panty-liners (wash-one-wear-one system) is the minimum needed to get through a cycle. I washed the liner by hand every day, even when there wasn't any leakage, I just rinsed it and hung it in the laundry room it dried in less than a day. I usually have a medium-light flow, your experience may vary.

Getting over the ICK Factor
I know that initially when a person hears about reusables the knee-jerk reaction is "ICK! Reusable PADS?!?!? I could never..."
I know, me too! I was apprehensive. I don't have a problem with the washing part, because cloth pads are as easy to wash as your underwear. I didn't know if they would be comfortable, if they would really work and be reliable. How would the practical side play out? It's a risk, it's new territory. It could go horribly wrong and one of our greatest fears as modern women could come true. Disposables have been around all our lives. They were introduced in the 1930s. It hasn't always been that way. Even though most of them didn't talk about it, our great grandmothers used reusable pads because there wasn't anything else. Read more on that here. 


Not convinced? OK, Let's go over the disposable routine: 
With disposable tampons and pads, you
1 Go to the store about 340 times and spend over $5000 in your menstruating lifetime.
2 Use a product once, then throw it in the landfill or flush it into our water, that works most of the time and smells like death all of the time.
3 Put the used tampons and pads in a bin next to the toilet so they stink up the room. Then take them to the landfill where they will stay for 1000s of years.
4 Get a yeast infection, a rash from the adhesive stuck to your butt, an over-dry irritated vagina and a dose of toxins and a lighter wallet every month.

Here is the reusable routine
With a Mooncup and GladRags you
1 Make a one time investment of $50 for 5 or more years of menstruating
2 Reuse your menstrual cup and pads which are worry free so you only have to attend to them once or twice a day, is so clean you almost don't ever see any blood, EVER except when you are dumping it in the toilet and has virtually no odor.
3 Simply rinse your cup (or wipe it out if you're in a public restroom) after dumping in the toilet and reinsert. Give it a good cleaning at the end of your cycle and it waits for you in it's pretty bag (included) until next month. To clean your pads: Soak in cold water (if you need to) then rinse and wash in your machine with warm or cold water (never hot, it sets the stains) with the regular wash, no extra load, nothing goes to waste. Hang or tumble to dry with the rest of your laundry. A whole cycles worth of pads, even if you don't use the cup, isn't any bigger than a large bath towel.
4 Reduce irritation and discomfort. You can't feel the cup AT ALL when it's placed right. The cup collects the flow rather than absorbing it, so the vaginal tissues aren't dried out as they can be with disposable tampons. When you wear cloth menstrual pads you feel nothing but dry, soft, fuzzy, comfy flannel and take in no toxins at all. Your Gladrags are made from organic cotton and the Mooncup is medical grade silicone, no leaching or off-gassing what-so-ever. You absorb nothing.

Save money, time and lessen your waste output with reusable menstrual products.


Now you know. I hope I've given you something to think about or perhaps knocked you over the fence if you've been thinking about it already. It's a very small thing to do only a couple of days a month and it really, really can make a big difference.

Would you like to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals such as dioxin in your life? Remove concerns about yeast infections, irritating fibers, possibly cancer causing agents and other skin irritants?
Would you like to reduce your contribution to "disposable" wastes which can take many years to break down, if they break down at all?
Would you like to support small businesses rather than multi-national conglomerate corporations?
Would you like to save hundreds of dollars a year by walking past the "Feminine Products" aisle in the grocery store and never even have to stop? Imagine never running out of pads or tampons again. Imagine never having to make a late night or early morning run to the store to buy over priced, toxic product.
Would you like to discover that cloth pads made from natural fibers have none of the odor associated with paper products and are as easy to clean as washing your underwear?
Would you like to insert a cup in the morning and not have to think about it again until evening?
Would you like to live your ethics by making an easy, healthy lifestyle choice that will significantly lessen your contribution of disposable plastic to landfills?
You can accomplish all of these things and more by switching from disposable pads and tampons to reusable cloth pads and a menstrual cup.

Take my advice: Buy a reusable pads and cup kit like the one I use. They are available for purchase from Gladrags here: Moon Cup and GladRags Kit. 

How to Make Vegan Tamale Pie: Lesson 2: Make the Filling

Part 2 in a 2 part series. Click for Lesson 1: Make the Corn Meal Mush

Tamale Pie. AKA Tamale Casserole, Tamale Bake, Polenta Pie, Chili Pie, the names go on and on but the result is the same. Layers of creamy polenta surrounding a savory filling, it's a fantastic main dish served with a salad, a hot meal in a bowl and a great side dish. 

Bake individual pies in pint canning jars for food on the go. You will look like a pro at your next potluck when you bake and serve a hot tamale pie in a beautiful covered casserole. Yeah. That's you. Looking good, there. 

The filling of this pie is a bomb vegan chili. Fresh ingredients are best. Use canned if that's all you have.

Ingredients:
1 prepared Tamale Pie Crust
4 stalks celery
1 med onion (yellow or white)
Half red bell pepper
1 tbs olive oil
1 tbs Chili powder
1 lb tomatoes, raw or canned
1 can black olives

1 cup cooked pinto beans.

1 cup cooked, diced potato. 

Instructions:

Chop celery, onion and pepper into 1/2" pieces.
Saute chopped veg in 1 tbs or less of olive oil with your favorite chili powder until the vegetables are very wilted, almost starting to caramelize.
Add 1 can tomatoes or about a pound of chopped raw tomatoes (preferred) and a half a can of black olives, reserving other half of olives for topping.
Simmer on low heat, with lid, for at least 30 minutes to an hour. The longer the better.
Add more water if needed.
Remove the lid and let the sauce reduce until very thick.
Add cooked beans and potatoes.
Stir well and simmer until thick and hearty.
Cool.

Bomb Vegan Chili Almost Done

When it's cool enough to handle, spoon vegetable filling into prepared Tamale Pie Crust.
Layer 1/4" slices of cold cornmeal mush on top of pie.

I'm no artist. 

Cover and bake in pre-heated oven at 350F for 30min.
Remove cover and add olives and other garnish (vegan cheese, jalapeños, diced bell pepper, etc) to top of pie.
Bake an additional 15 minutes or until top is crusty and brown.
Cool for 15 minutes, slice and serve.

Garnish and bake uncovered an additional 15 minutes

Serves 4 hungry people as a main dish type entrée, 4-6 as a groovy one dish meal, or 6-8 as a side dish.

Enjoy!

Make a Vegan Tamale Pie Lesson 1: The Corn Meal Mush

Tamale Pie. AKA Tamale Casserole, Polenta Pie

For the "cornmeal-mush" crust you will need:
6 cups water.
1/2 tsp salt (optional)
2 cups dried corn meal grits or polenta. I like a coarse grind, you might like finer.
Seasoning is optional. You can use whatever seasonings you want, or none at all if you prefer.
I used
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp dried thyme

Place all ingredients in a large pot with a lid that fits. Keep the lid nearby for when it starts to boil.
Bring to a boil, stir constantly with whisk until it starts to bubble violently.
Lid on and lower heat to Low.
Leave it until it's really, really, thick, 5 minutes or so.
Let it cool until handle-able, not completely cold but not lava-hot.
Line an 8x8 pan with about a half inch layer of polenta.

The rest of the polenta goes in a small loaf pan in the fridge; it will be sliced to top the pie, later.

Editor note: I will update later with a link to lesson 2: The filling and baking process, but briefly:

Fill the crust with your filling of choice, reserving some sauce for topping later
Top with cold polenta slices.
Bake, covered, 30 minutes @ 350F.
Uncover, top with  sauce, vegan cheese, or other garnish of your choice like olives, jalapenos, etc.
Bake uncovered @350F for an additional 15 minutes or until brown and crusty on top.
Cool 15min or more. It's even better let to go stone cold and reheat. (yay, leftovers)
Slice and serve

Photos of the indoor vegetables

First I'd like to thank Blogger for changing the photo uploader so I can use it again. Thank you, Blogger

Next I'd like to share these photos of our indoor veg and flowers. Keep in mind, all are being grown VEGAN! No animal derived fertilizers are used in our gardens.

Red lettuce. We have 14 of these.

Here is a photo of the starts on Oct 28 Wow, have they grown in 7 days!

Giant tomato plants. Not sure what these are. There are 6 different types of heirloom. I have the seed packets still; I will have to compare packet pictures with plants and name them.

Ruby Chard. I harvest a handful of leaves for a side dish or smoothie regularly.

Sweet Potato. We grew this from an eye. I think it probably won't produce potatoes in that small pot but it's a beautiful plant, nonetheless.

We found a dead, dried up plant on top of a trash can behind a church in Ashland, Ore. It has a stalk sticking up and I just had a feeling it would grow so we brought it home, put it outside next to the garden and squirted it with the hose once in a while. Near the end of summer it started to grow beautiful green leaves. Now there are 3 or 4 stalks and I hope a flower of some kind pops out. I wish I knew more about flowers!

Ok, That's it for today. I hope you enjoy the photos.

Is the comment section working? ;D

Moo Cow Momma

Moo Cow Momma is having a reusable family cloth giveaway!
Click Here to enter

Lessening our dependence on disposable cloth and single use plastic is very easy to do with cool cloths like these.