Rosemary Honey Lemonade

Hellooooo summer! 4 days until.....Schoooooooool's out for summer!

Excuse me while I brag for a moment. This is what I accomplished yesterday:

Clean out car ✓
Clean bathroom ✓
Clean kitchen ✓
Water plants ✓
De-clutter/clean desk ✓
De-clutter/clean counter ✓
Clean out school bag/briefcase ✓
Laundry (folded and put away) ✓
Clean kitty box ✓
Clean living room ✓
Clean bedroom ✓
Change sheets ✓
Vacuum ✓
Fill bird feeder ✓


A very productive day, and I was even able to make it to the Farmer's market and pick up some asparagus, garlic, and cranberry orange bread. MMMM. 


Onto the recipe: 


This recipe is fairly simple, which is really nice. :D 

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 + 3 cups water
2 sprigs fresh rosemary*
1/2 cup honey
Juice from 7 lemons
Lemon slices for garnish

*I used dried rosemary. My dad gave me some dried 'wintered' rosemary, which means it has a stronger, slightly different flavor than fresh rosemary. I used that instead. 

First, combine the sugar, 1 cup water, and rosemary in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil for 7 minutes, then remove from the heat and let sit for 1.5 hours. 

Juice the lemons. I don't have a juicer, so I had to take a break every few lemons...

Once the sugar/rosemary mix is cooled, add in the lemon juice, honey, and 3 more cups water. Mix well. Oh, and remove the rosemary sprigs. Strain into a pitcher and serve cold! 

Sorry, no picture of the finished product, I must have been too excited. :D 

Notes: This is VERY sweet, with the sugar and the honey, it was almost too much. If I made it again I would probably add in the juice of another lemon, and possibly some more rosemary, because I couldn't really taste it all that much. 

Waffles!

The day after my habitat for humanity work day, I decided to have a very lazy Sunday morning, complete with waffles. Yes, that's how far behind I am in posting recipes. Whoops. 

Of course, the obligatory line up of ingredients: 

1 3/4 cup Flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 egg yolks
1 3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup canola oil
2 egg whites

Just six ingredients! The less the better for me!

First thing is to combine the dry stuff, like the flour, baking powder, and salt, in a rather large bowl. I tend to always make a huge mess when flour is involved, so the bigger the bowl, the less the flour has a chance to run away. Before moving on to the wet stuff you're supposed to make a 'well' in the middle of the dry stuff. Well, I used such a big bowl that the piled up flour on the sides was barely half an inch high....not much of a well really. 

I don't have one of those nice egg separators, so I had to separate my eggs by hand, which I have to say, I did marvelously well! The egg yolks get beat up a little bit and then combined with the milk and the oil. Pour this wet mixture into the well in the flour bowl. Then mix it around gently. It's good to be clumpy. 

Then you're supposed to beat the egg whites until they have stiff peaks then fold them in nicely to the batter. Note: I don't own an electric beater, so I had to do this all by hand. Needless to say, I got to barely soft peaks and said "screw it" and folded in the egg whites anyway. I think the waffles turned out fine anyway. 

While all the above is happening your waffle iron should be heating up, so that by now it smells like it's on fire or something. Then pour that batter in! I'm really bad about pouring in too much at a time, so I really made the effort to put in less this time. This is the first time I didn't have any batter spill over the edges of my waffle iron! Success! 

 I was zooming fast to get this picture taken because I didn't want the bottom of the waffle to cook a whole bunch more than the top. 

My waffle maker has this light on the bottom so that when you flip it over, it turns on when you should take the waffle out. Which is really nice so I don't under or overcook my waffle, which I would do every time without that special light. 

 MMMM. GLORIOUSNESS. 

I cooked up some veggie sausage, slathered on some butter and syrup (even gave it a dash of powdered sugar), and topped off the whole meal with half a grapefruit. It was phenomenal. 

Vegan Alfredo

Last Saturday I had the opportunity to volunteer with a group from my church for the local Habitat for Humanity. I did a lot of hammering and a bit of sawing. It was some great anger management ;).

I had an amazing time, but  I was really exhausted when I got home, and I had been planning to make this vegan alfredo for a while, at least a week. It seemed every day this week I had another excuse to not make it. Not that I didn't want to, I was just lazy. It's a really simple recipe, and I was really pleased with how it ended up. Obviously, it doesn't taste like alfredo made with cream and cheese, but it has a really nice taste, and I can't wait to have leftovers. Luckily there's a lot of them. 

First, the cast of characters:


Ingredients
Pasta, of your choice (I used bow tie pasta)
1/3 heaping cup raw cashews
1 garlic clove
3 tbsp nutritional yeast
3/4 cup soy milk
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp non-dairy butter 
2 tsp organic Tamari soy sauce, or to taste
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp Tahini (sesame seed paste)
Pinch of nutmeg
Kosher salt, to taste
1/2 tsp Paprika, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Herbs or veggies to add into Alfredo, if desired (I used peas and mushrooms)


My absolute favorite kind of pasta is Farfalle, or bow tie pasta. I'm not sure when that love started, but I do know it was before Matt Smith, although I'm pretty sure he just solidified my love for the shape. 


So while the pasta is cooking, put all the other ingredients in a blender or food processor. 

I know it doesn't look very appetizing here, but it gets better I promise.


Blend it all together until smooth and mix it in with the cooked and drained pasta. I had some dehydrated mushrooms, which I rehydrated in some boiling water and mixed those in. While those were finishing cooking I mixed my frozen peas in with the hot, drained pasta to warm them up a bit. Then I added in the mushrooms and finally the alfredo sauce. Here is the final product:

Again, doesn't taste like the 'normal' alfredo sauce, but the mustard, tamari, and tahini mix together to create an interesting flavor that I really enjoyed. The mushrooms really lacked a lot of taste though, so I probably won't use those again. But the peas were a nice addition I thought. 

Enjoy! 


Original recipe can be found here: http://ohsheglows.com/2011/01/03/quick-and-easy-vegan-alfredo/

Goat Cheese Biscuits

I love, love, love Goat Cheese. It is really the one thing that makes it so hard for me to be completely vegan.

I decided to cook up one of my favorite "sick" meals on Monday night, since I was getting over a nasty head cold. Some Amy's 'No-Chicken Noodle Soup' and Goat Cheese Biscuits.

Ingredients: 
2 Cups Flour 
1 tsp Salt
2 ounces Butter (plus a little extra)
2 ounces Goat Cheese
1 cup Buttermilk*
Cast Iron Skillet**

*I don't drink cow milk. Instead I used 1 cup soy milk+juice of 1 lemon and let it sit for about 8-10 minutes. If you don't have buttermilk you can do the same with regular milk as well, or some white vinegar. Easy fix so you don't have to spend money getting buttermilk for one recipe!
**I used my cast iron skillet for this recipe because...I love my cast iron skillet. Although previous times I've made it I've just used a baking sheet. 


The first step is to preheat the oven WITH the cast iron skillet/baking sheet inside. While it's preheating, combine the flour and salt in a big bowl. 


Cut the butter into the flour. I've always ended up cutting my butter outside the flour mixture, and then added it in because I don't have the fancy tool that does it for you. Do the same with the goat cheese. Mix it around good so that all the butter and goat cheese is covered in flour. Then make a little well in the middle of your flour mixture and pour the buttermilk into the center. Mix until everything is good and sticky. 


By now, the oven and preferred baking container should be ready to go. Pop in a little bit of butter so the biscuits don't stick to the pan and then just drop some biscuits down. I don't worry about the shape too much, they taste the same no matter what they look like! 

Right about to go into the oven! 
Bake these puppies for about 15 minutes, or until the tops start to go a little golden brown. You can brush some melted butter on top if you want, I never do because that's just too much butter for my tastes. 

Fresh out of the oven! MMM MMM GOOD! Definitely eat these warm if you can.

The full comfort food meal. Oh so good. 




These biscuits are also really good for breakfast. Warm them up in the microwave, or on the stove and put some jelly on top, very yummy. 

Coconut Rice!

Why have I all of a sudden decided to post in this again? Because I have undertaken a challenge on my private blog to post 100 recipes, and I though "why not update them here as well?"

So, onto the first recipe: Coconut Rice 


Ingredients: 
2 cups Jasmine Rice
2 cups water
1 cup coconut cream*
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 tbsp Sugar

Let me start off by saying that I LOVE jasmine rice in any way, shape, or form. It is by far my favorite kind of rice, and I've been eating a lot of it with my stomach issues as of late. 

The first order of business with Jasmine rice is to rinse it really good. If you don't you'll get more of a sushi rice texture, which is not what we want with this recipe. 

This is my first rinse. It needs to be rinsed until the water is basically clear after you swish it around a few times. 

*I couldn't find coconut cream, so instead I used a bit of coconut milk. But here's the interesting thing. If you've never had coconut milk, it separates inside the can when it's cold so there's this really thick stuff on top (the cream) and more watery stuff on bottom.  You can kind of see where there's the really thick cream on top and the more water stuff under it. So I scooped out that thick stuff and threw away the rest, because I frankly don't know what to do with it...

Then combine all ingredients above in a large saucepan. Bring all this up to a slight boil, and stir just until the sugar dissolves. Then put the stove down to 'low' and let it sit until the liquid is dissolved. The original recipe said 40-45 minutes, but I found mine only needed about 20-25. 

 YUM.














I cooked up some of this that I found at my local whole foods. There were no preparation instructions, but I decided to bake in for about 15 minutes at 350 to get it warm and a little crispy.

 

Dinner is served!!