Cheeseless Nacho Cheese - How'd I do that?

While shopping in the Whole Foods Bulk aisle, I made an astonishing purchase:  Nutritional Yeast.  Wait, what?

Nutritional Yeast is inactivated yeast fortified with B vitamins that is rich in protein. Its sold in flakes or powder.  If you're a vegan and you're not eating this, you probably should be. It has a nutty, cheesy aroma and if someone just told you it was cheese sauce mix, you'd probably believe them.  Its shockingly flavorful, and its used in a lot of cheese additions.

I know you've had vegan cheese before, probably to your disappointment. This recipe, with some changes, is amazing as nacho cheese.  It fooled even me, and I made it.  I replaced 2/3 of the water with almond milk, rather than soy as many people had suggested, and added the tumeric.  Soy margarine was used this time but could probably be replaced with either oil or butter.

The result of this recipe will have you baffled.  Its so damn close to cheesy sauce you might not even miss it.

Lemon Sorbet

Lately I have been experimenting with a Donvier ice cream maker I bought at Goodwill last winter.  Its the kind where you freeze the cylinder overnight and then add your ingredients and turn the paddle.  Its a little difficult to get to know at first, and your freezer must be on the coldest setting possible.   Not doing so has resulted in one ice cream disaster (last Halloween), and one coconut sorbet disaster (last week, we still ate it, it was good but chunky.)

This time it worked!

Behold my latest summer dessert:  lemon sorbet.  Its an excellent treat for a summer evening.  No fat, filled with fruit juice and quite an excellent taste.   This recipe has half the sugar of the previous coconut one, which I found much too sweet.  So if you find yourself with an ice cream maker, or if you want to make sorbet with a blender or food processor, I highly recommend this one!

Don't like lemon?  Here's my Coconut-lime sorbet(vegan):

1 can Coconut Milk
Zest of 1 lime
1 tsp lime juice
1/2 - 1 Cup sugar
1 Cup water

Add the sugar to the water and bring to a boil.  Simmer until the water is reduced by half.  Remove from heat add the coconut milk. Put the lime zest in a tea ball and let it sit in the mixture that you have just created. Chill in the refrigerator.  Remove the teaball.  For extra lime-y flavor and tang add a little of the lime juice.  Pour into your sorbet-creation device.

recipe for lemon sorbet
no ice cream maker? no problem.

Sweet Potato Pie

I'm really against wasting food, and now that I can afford to just buy more food, I'm trying extra hard to not be wasteful.  So, what to do with 2 extra sweet potatoes in your fridge?  Well you could bake them, or you could bake them into a PIE. This was my first attempt at sweet potato pie, and my first pie for at least six months.  The crust is an all-butter recipe.  Its crispy and I like it, but it might be worth it to try one with shortening in the future.  The recipe is much like pumpkin pie, but working with fresh sweet potatoes is much more managable than either a pumpkin or a butternut squash.  Easy to make in an evening with ingredients you probably have already, great for the holiday weekend.  Happy 4th of July!

 

Cat on a leash

Furball is currently exploring on our new acquisition:  a cat leash!  

Amaranth

While shopping in my favorite place today (Whole Foods bulk section) I found yet another unusual grain:  Amaranth.  According to the label at the store, while it is revered elsewhere in the world, its usually considered a weed here in the states and nobody likes it.  The grain itself looks like an even smaller version of quinoa. And, according to multiple sources, one serving has anywhere from 20-80% of your daily iron and a third of your daily calcium.  Awesome.

When I got home, I began searching for some delicious recipes to make with my new mystery grain.  I found two:  Amaranth tabbouleh and a treat from mexico called "Alegria".  Its a "candy" similar to rice krispy treats, made with honey, butter, dried fruits, and nuts.  Zach is leaving for Houston tomorrow, so I figured he could take these with him.

While the tabbouleh was a fairly standard recipe(and frickin' delicious), making the Alegria was a unique experience.  First you have to pop the Amaranth.  It pops fairly easily, just like tiny, tiny popcorn but you have to be extremely careful not to burn it.  Three seconds can be the difference between toasty popped amaranth and a pan of burned crap.

here are the popped amaranths.  They smell and taste like 

classic puffed wheat cereal, just smaller.

While the recipe called for half corn syrup or molasses and half  honey, I didn't have any of the first two so I used all honey.  This made the bars softer than they should have been, but not too bad.  I cut some up and wrapped them in plastic wrap for Zach's journey.  

Here are the recipes mentioned in the post and some Amaranth resources:

Tabouli  I skipped the whole lettuce leaf thing.  The vitamin C from the lemon juice will help you absorb all that Iron!

Alegria

Wikipedia Amaranth

Nutrient data

Summer is here!

After three weeks of cold rain, the weather finally broke and the dry summer season has begun.  I have actually been experiencing some allergy sneezing and sniffles, and a local told me its allergy season!  I have never before actually had outdoor allergies, but I've always heard local honey is a good remedy for that.  And now that I think about it, I had been eating (or drinking) local honey back in Pittsburgh for a very long time.  Local honey was always purchased at the fair or Schramm's farm, and it may have been the reason I've never really had an outdoor allergy problem before.  Now if someone could only make indoor honey...

Portland Saturday market honey guy to the rescue!  At 3 dollars, this jar of honey is a lot smaller than it looks.  But I'm sure said honey guy's blood, sweat and tears went into it.  Actually, ew...I hope not.  It tastes pretty good though.

So besides sneezing, what am I doing with my life?  Short answer: nothing.  No job yet, and no word back from my interview.  But that's okay for now, being unemployed in the summertime is Childhood version 2.0.  Except nobody tells me when to go to bed, and I can have all the beer I want.

Enter kiddie crafts.  Lately, I've been making friendship bracelets among other things (things which I cannot post yet since I'm sending two of them off to Texas as a gift and I don't want to spoil the surprise).  I loved making bracelets when I was a kid, and the fun is not lost on me at 24 1/2.  Today, patterns for bracelets can be found all over the internet, not just in books, though my favorite still comes out of the original Klutz Friendship Bracelets book (by Laura Torres):

Double Chain Knot.  Not too intricate but you can make 5 in an hour

and wear them all at the same time.  Like, for instance, while watching

90's sitcoms at 3AM because you don't have a job.

Another thing we've been working on is our patio garden.  Not too much has sprouted yet, but when they do, I'll be swimming in cilantro.  Which will get made into pesto.  And frozen.  Tomatoes (I hope they don't get blight), jalapeno peppers, petunias, catnip (for guess who!), lemon balm, rosemary, and cilantro should soon be sprouting on our balcony.  Time will tell.

Cats love balconies

Furball journeyed across the country with us.  And he got what he was promised:  A balcony.

Lounging; tummy's gettin' leafy.

Hmm, what is this forcefield?

Now, how do I escape?!