This recipe came about when I saw this post about making your own walnut milk.  I thought it’d be the perfect base for a walnut maple icecream!  So the next day I set about making my walnut milk.  I made it just like I make my almond milk.  I used 2/3c of walnuts for almost 1 liter of water.  I soaked the walnuts for 4 hours and rinsed well.  I observed two interesting things about the walnut milk.  Firstly, it didn’t seem as creamy as almond milk does.  Secondly, there was a lot less pulp leftover than when making almond milk, less than half the amount left.  I guess walnuts blend up more easily than almonds!  Funny that it makes a thinner milk, though.

So anyway, after making the walnut milk, I had to make the icecream!  This was my recipe:

Walnut Maple Brownie Icecream

2 1/4 c   walnut milk (plain, unsweetened)

200ml  full fat coconut milk (needed to help make the icecream more creamy)

1/2 c   sugar (I used organic evaporated cane sugar)

1 tsp maple extract  (or you can use maple syrup to sweeten instead of sugar, I didn’t have any but that’d be awesome!)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 c  toasted walnuts (I slowly toasted mine in the oven, checking every few minutes to make sure they didn’t burn)

1/2 c chopped brownie pieces (optional, but I had some in the freezer)

Blend the milks, sugar, and extracts for 1 minute (or if using maple syrup instead of granulated sugar you can just mix it instead of blending).  Pour into a container and let it chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours.  Pour into your icecream maker and make according to the instructions of your machine.  When it comes to the end, add in the toasted walnuts and chopped brownie pieces to mix.  Eat immediately (it will be soft) or scoop into a container and chill in the freezer for a few hours first.

**When making icecream, my general rule is around 3 cups of milk and about 1/2c of sweetener.  If I use 400ml of coconut milk and the rest another nondairy  milk (usually almond these days) I get a creamier result.  The above icecream wasn’t AS creamy because the walnut milk isn’t really creamy and it only had 200ml coconut milk.  But it was still VERY tasty and flavorful.  And sometimes it’s nice to eat a lighter tasting icecream.  Sometimes I add in 1/4 to 1/2tsp of xanthan gum blended into the icecream base to make it smoother when churning (it helps prevent ice crystals from forming), but I really don’t care for the “mallowy” mouthfeel of the icecream that way, so I haven’t used that for quite awhile.

So here are a few photos showing what we’ve been up to lately.

I love Svara’s creativity.  A few weeks ago I was clearing out the office and Svara took this box.  She decided it was her car and she even drew a steering wheel on the front top panel and windows on the sides.

Here she is pretending to drive.

Svara has a bike! We’ve been wanting to get her a proper bike for a long time and we finally managed to.  As a bonus it’s PINK and has a basket!  She insisted on a bike helmet and knee/elbow guards, that’s my safety girl!

Svara still loves helping in the kitchen. Here we were making pizzas, one of her favorites, and I left the kitchen for a few minutes while she was putting her toppings on.  I came back in and she asked if she had enough olives or if she needed more.  LOL  That girl LOVES olives!

Svara is not as picky as she was a couple years ago and her repertoire of foods that she will readily eat has expanded.  When she turned four she was much more open to reason and she will now try new things.  Sometimes she doesn’t like them and sometimes she does, but she always tries.  One of her new favorites is four angle beans (also called winged beans).  Like all her steamed veggies she prefers them with salad dressing on them (homemade with olive oil and apple cider vinegar).  She loves them so much that she makes sure to serve herself LOTS so that Naren and myself won’t eat too many!

At four and a half Svara is showing some interest in learning to read.  She can read a few words and is learning how to sound out three letter words as well.  I’m not following a very strict schedule yet, but each day we spend some time doing academic activities.

Here is Svara’s special papaya plant to start, she checks on it every morning.

My potato is not looking quite as well as Svara’s papaya.  It got blown down in a storm, but continued to grow.  Now it’s starting to look a little yellow and a bit brown in a few places.  But it’s about time for that.  I’ll wait until it gets more dead and then see if I got any potatoes!

the curry leaf is growing well!  It always has.  As long as it doesn’t get infested again it’ll keep going strong.

Ah, my poor mint.  This is the third time I’ve tried to grow mint, the first two batches died.  So far this one is looking well for the past couple weeks, so I really hope it keeps growing!

Here is the red spinach/amaranth.  I thought it’d be full grown by now, but not yet.  It is growing, though.  I’m not sure why the ones on the left are so much bigger than the ones on the right.  Perhaps there was more fertilizer over there or something?  I want to give it some worm compost, but I have to wait another month before I harvest it.

Here is the green spinach/amaranth growing.  Not nearly as big as the red ones, quite strange!  Plus a stray cat dug up part of it   But I still have hopes!

Italian parsley

The basil and rosemary. Not looking its best since I made pesto a couple weeks ago, but it’s doing well.  I have to take a photo of it next time BEFORE I pick all the leaves for pesto!

My tomato seedlings really need replanting!  Planning on getting some bigger pots and some more soil tomorrow.

The chili seedlings sprouted a couple weeks ago!  I need to replant these as well.  On the bottom of the photo you can see the bit of bougainvillea that Svara plucked from one and stuck in the soil.  It’s been there for about 3 weeks and is still alive, I wonder if it is growing roots.

Here is the passionfruit, it has grown a LOT since last month!  I can’t wait to see how big it gets!

Here is the rogue papaya tree growing behind the bougainvillea. Seems to be doing well!

These are new this month – they are pandan plants.  Naren’s mom gave them to us.  I don’t use pandan much in cooking, but I should look it up and see what I can do with it.  I know it’s kind of used like vanilla here.

Here is another new thing this month.  I cooked a pumpkin last month and tossed the seeds outside in the grass. Lo and behold, last week I noticed quite a few had sprouted!  At least count there were FIFTEEN little pumpkin plants!  I don’t know how many will survive, but we’ll see!  I hope a couple of them grow strongly, it’d be awesome to have some home grown pumpkins!

I took some of them and replanted them in a more appropriate spot.  Not sure if this will help them or not, we’ll see!  Tomorrow when we buy more soil I’ll put some better soil around them.

Here is our biggest papaya tree that is growing outside. Seems to be growing well!

Our four angle beans suffered a sad fate.  They seemed to do well when we transferred them last month, but after a couple disturbances by stray cats they died   I planted a few more seeds in the same spot, and put sticks around to try to keep away the cats.  All three seeds sprouted, so hopefully they’ll grow big and strong!

That’s it for this month!  I’ll take photos again at the end of January!

When I tried the brownie recipe in Vive le Vegan by Dreena Burton, I knew I was once again in brownie heaven!  Who needs eggs and butter when you can have the richest brownie ever without any!  And bonus, it’s EASY to make!  It’s seriously one of the fastest baked goods I make.

Sorry I can’t post a link to the recipe.  I think it used to be on her recipe site but I couldn’t find it there the last time I looked.  But I seriously recommend the book, there are SO many awesome recipes!  Including her homestyle chocolate chip cookies (I know that recipe is on her recipe site!).

But I did want to share what I made today anyway, because this can be done with ANY brownie recipe.

I wanted to make gingerbread cookies today with Svara, but since I was also making other things (homemade veggie burgers and buns) I didn’t get a chance, so brownies it was (we had guests for dinner). But I still wanted to use up some of that luscious sweet almond cream cheese spread that I made the other day.  I had meant to use it as frosting on the gingerbread cookies.  I suddenly had an idea – cream cheese swirl brownies!  I hadn’t made “actual” cream cheese brownies since I was in high school, so I quickly googled it and found out that it is often cream cheese mixed with sugar and and egg, and swirled into the batter.  Since my cream cheese spread was already sweet, I just mixed it with some extra almond milk and used that.  It worked BEAUTIFULLY!!  Here are some pics for you!

First up, make some brownie batter!  Don’t forget to eat some

Mix together 1/2 cup of sweet almond cream cheese spread with 1/4 cup of almond milk (or other nondairy milk)

all stirred up, tastes yummy! I found that the taste from the coconut oil really spread into this cream cheese, it had quite a coconut flavor.  That was fine with me, but if you are not a huge fan of coconut you may want to use a more neutral oil.

Put 3/4 of your brownie batter into your pan (no need to measure, it’s all approximate) and top with your cream cheese goodness.

Spread the rest of your brownie batter on top of the cream cheese layer (this was a tad difficult as mine was quite thick, but neatness isn’t graded with home baking, right? Then take a knife and swirl it back and forth.

bake as the recipe directs.  Mine is a little toasty on top thanks to my hot top elements in my oven, but the brownies weren’t actually overdone.  It’s all good!

Another shot of the baked brownies.  The brownies are so pretty!  Pardon the not so pretty baking pan, it is a testament to how much baking I do!  This pan was used THREE times today!!  First to bake veggie burgers, then burger buns, then these brownies.  A hard worker indeed!  Don’t worry, I washed the pan between uses.

And here they are, out of the pan and ready to eat!

So what’s the verdict?  These brownies ROCKED!!  The almond cream cheese mixture baked up really nicely and had a dense cakey texture just like their dairy counterpart.  The slight coconut/almond flavor lent a beautiful new kick to these all time favorite brownies.  When I make this almond cream cheese again I’ll definitely have to make another batch of these brownies, they are just TOO good!  Of course I’ll again have to invite over guests to help us eat them because having a pan of these babies in the fridge is just asking for trouble.  Want to come over?

The first thing I tried was to make a cheesecake, but using leftover almond pulp from making almond milk.  It did NOT turn out the way I expected.  It was edible, but not very enjoyable.  Naren wouldn’t touch it after the first nibble, so I ate the rest.  A lot of the creaminess is taken out of almonds when you make milk out of them!  Probably most of the fat, and who knows what else.  So I will NOT be doing that again.I’ll be finding different things to do with my almond pulp!

So it was back to using blanched soaked almonds.  Today’s recipe experiment turned out MUCH better!

I decided I wanted to skip the whole put it in a cloth and let it drain in a colander all night step, I just wanted to blend and be done.  I remembered making a cashew cream cheese from the book Go Dairy Free (an excellent cookbook and dairy free resource!) a couple years ago out of blended cashews and a few other ingredients.  It was good, but I much prefer the taste of almonds to cashews. So I decided to combine that with the vegan feta and make a sweet cream cheese spread!  This is what I did:

Sweet Almond Cream Cheese Spread

• 1 cup blanched almonds, soak overnight (I placed my almonds in boiling   water for 1 minute, drained, and squeezed off the skins)
• 2 T water
• 3 T coconut oil (you could use any sweet or mild oil, not olive!)
• 4T powdered sugar (you could use any sweetener you like, and it could be cut down to 3T I think)
• 1T lemon juice (add more if you like it more tangy)
• pinch of salt

Blend all ingredients together in food processor.  If you have a vitamix blender, go ahead and use that to get the mixture ultra smooth!  I know it would be too thick for my blender so I didn’t even try.  You could make it in a blender and just add more water, and then wrap it in cloth/cheesecloth and let it drain in a colander overnight.  But I was too lazy today.  I blended it for about 10 minutes total in my food processor to get it as smooth as I could.  Then just scoop into a container and put in the fridge!  I’m sure tomorrow it will be even more stiff, but I already used it tonight for a snack.  A cream cheese and jam sandwich!

I’m very happy with how this recipe turned out!  It’s always nice when a food experiment turns out tasty.  I think next time I’ll add a little extra lemon juice and/or reduce the sugar a tad.  It didn’t need to be as sweet as I made it when added to a jam sandwich.

I think this would also make a great sweet spread!  Like a dip for graham crackers or something.  Maybe even add in a little cocoa powder! It’s a bit too stiff for a frosting, but I wonder if it could be made into a cream cheese frosting by adding a little almond milk and beating it up (after it has cooled all the way).  I just might give that a try!

Because Svara is allergic to dairy, we of course don’t use dairy milk.  But we DO use lots of nondairy milk for cooking, drinking, and baking.  I am not a huge fan of the beany taste of soymilk, but I have found a couple brands here that I like the taste of.  Svara drinks organic soymilk, which is a local brand that tastes beany to me, so I don’t drink it.  But because we also eat a lot of tofu, I thought it was time to try to find a substitute for some of the soy in our diets.  Enter almond milk!  Almond milk is insanely expensive here, so I would never buy it.  However, I can buy bulk almonds at the baking supply shop for a good price and always have them at home for using in cooking.  It has taken me years to get to the step of trying to make my own almond milk, though, I don’t know why!  It has turned out to be super easy, cheaper than buying soymilk, and less garbage from all that packaging!

I read at least 50 different blogs about making homemade almond milk and there are SO many variations as to how many almonds to use, how much water, etc.  This is what I use:

Homemade Almond Milk

1 cup whole almonds, soaked overnight in the fridge

5 cups water

That’s it!  Most recipes call for 1 cup of almonds, but the amount of water will vary.  If you want a thick super creamy milk, use 3 cups of water.  If you don’t mind it thinner, use up to  cups of water.  I have found that I like to make 4-6 cups of milk with my 1 cup of almonds.  Or sometimes I’ll just use 2/3 or 3/4 c of almonds and 4 cups of water so it fits nicely in my jug (a leftover glass juice bottle).

All you have to do is soak the almonds for several hours (I find it easier to do it overnight, but you can put them to soak in the morning and make the milk in the evening).  I soak them in the fridge because it’s so warm here that if they soak too long on the counter they’ll get a slightly sour taste/smell.   After they are soaked, put them in the blender with 3-4 cups of water and blend for about 4 minutes.

Once it is all blended up, pour it into some sort of strainer, nutmilk bag, etc.  I put a metal strainer on top of a bowl, place a cloth in it, and pour in the milk.  This works fine for me!  A tea towel works great!

Let the milk drain, then gather up all the edges and squeeze out the remaining milk. Squeeze as much as you can!  You’ll be left with something like this:

Actually, it would normally be all flecked with almond skin.  However, I’ve been experimenting with regular almond pulp or de-skinned almond pulp, and this one had no skins (I blanched the almonds and squeezed off the skins before soaking them).  I found that it made no difference to the texture of the pulp, though, so I won’t bother to do that again!

Then add more water to get however much milk you want and put it in containers in the fridge. Use within 5 days (at least that’s what all the websites I saw recommended, not sure how long it would stay good.)

The cost for me for 1 cup of almonds is RM3 (that’s about USD $1). So I get a quart of almond milk (or more if I decide to add more water) for a great price!   I would definitely suggest buying almonds in bulk, it’s SO much cheaper.  I buy in 1 kilogram bags (about 2.2 pounds) and that gives me 7 liters/quarts of almond milk.

Some people add sweeteners to their almond milk, but I like to be able to use mine for cooking if I want without worrying (makes awesome white sauce!), so I don’t.  If I want to make a drink I usually blend it with ice and whatever sweetener/flavor I want, so I don’t do that when I make it.  But if you know you mainly want to use it for drinking, cereal, etc. then feel free to add as much sweetner as you want!  Some people use dates for the sweetener.

The other benefit of making your own almond milk is all the leftover pulp!  Actually, I haven’t quite decided if the leftover pulp is a blessing or a curse.  I know there is a lot of nutrition left in there, but it’s sometimes hard to figure out what to do with it!  Apparently this is very common with those who make their own almond milk.  However, I have found a few things to do with it and I have a few more that I am going to try, so I’ll make another post about that!  When I do I’ll link to it from here.

In the meantime, I hope you give this a try, it really is my favorite milk of all!!

Enjoy!

This year we were pretty busy the week of Thanksgiving, so we just passed by it (except I DID make a pumpkin pie, I had to make the house smell a little like Thanksgiving that week!).  A couple weeks later I managed to make a “turkey” seitan roast and that naturally led to a small Thanksgiving dinner.  Since it was quite impromptu and it wasn’t very extensive, we just had the dinner with the three of us.

Here is what I made:

• Seitan roast (I used Bryanna Clark Grogan’s recipe which used to be on her site, but her recipes are down for maintenance .  You can see the recipe here).  I usually bake it in two loaf pans, but since I have that new glass casserole dish I roasted it in there.  IT turned out wonderfully!  It took longer to roast than in two pans, though.  Apparently you can also bake these as cutlets (in the broth just like with the loaf or big roast).  I’m going to try that next time as it won’t take as much oven time.  One of the keys of this great seitan is the kneading time.  I let it knead in my bread machine.  super easy and it leaves me free to get other things done while it’s kneading!  It really helps the texture of the loaf.  And leftovers are GREAT in sandwiches!!
• Dressing.  This has always easily been my favorite dish at Thanksgiving since I was a child.  My family’s recipe uses eggs, but Svara can’t eat eggs, so I just used some vegetable broth instead.  The bread wasn’t stale enough, though, so it was a little gooey inside.  Next time, less broth!
• Mashed potatoes, of course!
• Gravy – Usually I use Bryanna Clark Grogan’s gravy which is very tasty (her dressing and gravy recipes can be found on this page), but this time I used a new recipe from one of my new favorite cookbooks, Passionate Vegetarian.  It is a more time consuming recipe, but it’s so tasty that it’s worth it when I have time!
• Green beans – because we HAD to have a vegetable!
• MISSING – I usually manage to get some cranberries for cranberry sauce which I LOOOOOOVE, but this was so last minute that I didn’t get to the appropriate store.  Also missing is some type of homemade bread.  But I was crunched on time and heck, we have homemade bread once or twice a week, so we didn’t need to fill up on that!

I didn’t follow a precise recipe, but this is basically what I used:

cooked pasta (I used approximately 1/2 lb of spiral noodles)

1 lb. tofu ricotta (I use the recipe in Veganomicon but any recipe will do)

leftover basil pesto (about 1/4 cup)

1/2 cup sauteed mushrooms

1 jar spaghetti sauce

chopped olives

2 cups “cheese” sauce – I used the melty white cheese recipe in The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook

Mix the spaghetti sauce with the pasta.  Place half into the 2L casserole dish.  Top with tofu ricotta, then the pesto and mushrooms. Top with the rest of the pasta, then the cheese sauce and olives.  This cheese sauce was the perfect topping, it turned out melty, but got crusty like dairy cheese on the edges.  A tasty casserole indeed!

Svara didn’t like it much, but that’s no surprise.  She much prefers more simple meals.  I loved it, though, and will definitely make it again!

Another reason I’m sure the bin is doing well is that this week we found worm babies!  I could only get a picture of one today as I rifled through the box.  But a few days ago there was a group of about 20-50 of them!  I don’t know where they went, I couldn’t find them today. Either they are spread all over, or some died.  Perhaps I shouldn’t disturb the dirt in my worm bin so often, I’m sure the baby worms are quite delicate.  I’m super excited that I found the babies, though, it was like a confirmation that the worm box is doing well.

Svara loves when I look through the worm box and she can hold a few worms, but I guess from now on I’ll disturb it as least as possible, just digging a hole every few days to a week to add some more scraps.

***EDIT***. After talking to my sister and looking at more baby worm info online, these might not be baby worms after all, they may just be a different kind of worm as a result of too many food scraps perhaps. Ah well, I’ll keep a lookout over the next few weeks and see if they grow and look like the earthworms, or see if they just disappear. Ah, the adventures of a worm bin!

Vegan Rice Chickpea Casserole

4cups (approximately) cooked rice

1 3/4C (1 can) mashed chickpeas (add up to 1tsp kelp powder for fishy taste if desired)

2 c chopped broccoli or other vegetable of your choice

Some sauteed mushrooms and celery would be awesome in this as well, I didn’t have any on hand.

Cream Sauce:

3 cups non dairy milk of your choice (I used unsweetened almond, loved it!)

2-3T margarine or oil

1 small onion, chopped

3T flour

2T nutritional yeast (optional, makes the sauce more “cheesy”)

salt and pepper to taste (I used about 3/4 tsp salt, next time I’ll use 1tsp)

Bread Crumb Topping:

Approximately 1c toasted breadcrumbs.  I mixed in 1T nutritional yeast, 1/4 tsp of pepper and paprika.  You can use any herbs/seasonings you’d like.

To make sauce:

saute onion in butter or oil until golden brown (I did it on very low heat for about 20 minutes so they were somewhat caramelized – yum!!).   Remove from heat.  Add flour and stir.  Slowly add milk, stirring to prevent lumps.  Add nutritional yeast if using and stir. Cook over medium heat until thick and bubbly.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  I know this pot is very large for this little sauce, but this is my pressure cooker pot which has a nice thick bottom and will not burn the onions!

Add the broccoli and mashed chickpeas to the cream sauce:

Mix it up!  Taste and adjust seasonings if desired.  It still needs to be stirred with the rice, so it should be a little on the salty side right now.

Stir into your cooked rice.  I used leftover rice and I’m not really sure on the amount.  My best guess is about 4 cups, but it could have been a little more.  add enough so it’s creamy but not soupy.  Taste and adjust seasonings.

Pour your casserole into your casserole dish and top with breadcrumbs.  Bake at 350 F for approximately 1 hour.

Ta-Da!

When I make this again I think I’ll use peas instead of broccoli.  I love broccoli, but when it’s in a casserole it kind of tends to overwhelm the other flavors.  I added kelp powder to my chickpeas, but I won’t do that next time.  I’ll definitely add more black pepper, I ran out this time, only had a dash   Other than that it was quite tasty!  I know it was a success because Naren asked if there were leftovers the next day.