waffling around

Posting every day for the entire month of November?? What was I thinking? For the last few days I've been eating but not really cooking, and no one wants to hear about endless pieces of bread with hummus or strange salads composed of things I found lurking in the back of the vegetable drawer.

Today, though, I was walking home from class and thinking about breakfast (I have class every day at 8:15 am, and I don't like eating beforehand) and I realized I hadn't told you about my favorite waffles. Since, of course, I need a picture of the waffles, this was a perfect excuse to make and eat said waffles.

Will you believe it when I tell you that, until a month ago, I'd never made waffles and eaten them probably three times in my life? I don't have a waffle maker at home, or funds or space to obtain one, but one of my roomate here does. A few weeks ago my other roomate asked me to make waffles, which, of course, I gladly agreed to. Lolo to the rescue! I made these, minus the blueberries, and my roomates kept gushing on and on about them and wouldn't believe me when I said they didn't have eggs or milk.

Since then I've been making waffles about once a week, and I'm using a variation of lolo's recipe-- it's basically the same, just healthified a bit. I think I'll experiment with pumpkin waffles next!

My favorite way to eat these is with a sprinkle of sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice.

Waffles (makes approx. 6-- serves 2)

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 Tbsp sugar

7 Tbsp soy yoghurt, any flavour (I use plain)

2/3 cup soy milk

2 tbsp water

1 tbsp oil

Begin preheating your waffle iron. Combine the dry ingredients in a small mixing bowl. Whisk the wet ingredients together, then fold them into the dry ingredients, using as few strokes as possible. Grease your waffle iron, and then waffle away!

If you want to make these ahead of time, cook them until they're slightly less brown then you'd like, then freeze them. Reheat them in a toaster for a quick and delicious breakfast.

Mrs. Badmouth's Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls...

...are really, really, really good. Do yourself a favour and go make them now! I follwed the recipe exactly, except for the glaze: I mixed tofu cream cheese with pumpkin butter and used that instead of a powdered sugar glaze.

(Excuse the bad pictures...it was dark by the time I finished these.)

Brunch

Isn't brunch a wonderful invention? Sure, I know, it was probably invented for commerical reasons, but still. It's so nice that for two days of the week other people finally understand that it's ok to eat "not-breakfast" foods for breakfast! Or that it's ok to have your eggs (in this case, scrambled tofu) at 3pm if that's the way you roll. Every coupe of weeks New York Magazine does 21 question interviews with interesting/semi-famous New Yorkers, and one of the questions is "Brunch: pro or con?". I just don't get the con-sayers.



Anyway, this is what I had for brunch today: home fries, guacamole, mushrooms, tomotoes, and rolls. Not pictured are the waffles and the chocolate cranberry bread (though I think that last one might be making an appearance here tomorrow...just sayin'.)

Yum.

I hadn't had home fries in forever, and they really hit the spot this morning. And isn't home fries a great word? Home fries. It has such a nice sound. (But what's the difference between home fries and oven fries? Two minutes of googling seemed to reveal that home fries are often not fry shaped and sometimes cooking in a skillet, while oven fries are usually baked. But home fries sounds so much better, so these are definately home fries.)

I'm sure you wanted to read all of that.

Spicy Herbed Home Fries

3 large potatoes

2 tsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

1/2 tsp hungarian paprika

1/4 tsp cayenne

1/2 tsp dried thyme

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Peel the potatoes and cut them into 1/4'' slabs. Cut each slab vertically into 1/4'' slices, so that the potatoes end up looking like, you know, fries. Mix the potato with the remaining ingredients, and spread them in a single layer on a foil-lined cookie sheet. Bake for 30 minutes, or until cooked and crispy.

Banana-Coconut Bread

I've been wanting banana bread for a long time. I don't really know why-- normally I don't even like bananas, but banana bread has been sounding really good. So I bought bananas last week, and they were finally ripe enough for bread today. Then, of course, I had to decide on a recipe. There are thousands of recipes for banana bread out there! I ended up settling for one from a cookbook by my absolute favourite cookbook authors, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. I know I've written about them before, but really, all of their cookbooks are amazing! They don't focus on a specific country, but rather flavours: home baking, flatbreads, rice... Most of the recipes are from Asia, though, and the books are part cookbook, part travel guide, and part beautiful photography. I've liked every recipe I've ever made from one of ther books.



Anyway, banana-coconut bread it was. With a hint of rum and a crackly demerara sugar crust. Yum.

Banana-Coconut Bread (makes 1 loaf)
adapted from HomeBaking: the Artful Mix of Flour and Traditions from Around the World

3 large, over-ripe bananas
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
3/4 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
4 ounces margerine, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1/8 tsp vinegar (I used apple cider)
2 tbsp dark rum
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut
demerara or other coarse, raw sugar for sprinkling on top

Pre-heat the oven to 350 F. and butter a loaf pan. Whisk the flour, spices, baking soda, and salt together in a small bowl. In a medium bowl, cream the "butter" and sugar for several minutes. Add the rum and vinegar and mix for another minute. Starting with the banana mixture, add the banana and flour mixtures alternately, about a cup at a time. Do not over mix. When the last cup of flour is barely incorporated, use a spatula to fold the coconut in using several swift strokes. Scrape the thick batter into the prepared pan, smooth the top, and sprinkle the top generously and evenly with the demerara sugar.

Bake for 50-65 minutes, until the top is golden and a tooth pick comes out cleanly. A 9x5 loaf pan will take less time to bake than an 8x4 pan.

Enjoy!

Cranberry-Coconut Granola

I can't believe people pay $5 or $6 for those little bags of granola they sell at the grocery store! If you know how to turn the oven on, use a measuring cup and a mixing spoon, then you can make it yourself for just pennies.

This particular recipe was a bit of an experiment using one of my favorite vegan sweeteners: apple juice concentrate. I think that this 100% natural sweetener has been overlooked for far to long, and I'm on a mission to find good uses for it! I haven't actually used it in baked goods yet, but maybe that should be my next experiment. Anyway, it sweetens the granola perfectly, though it doesn't leave much of an apple taste behind.

This cranberry-coconut-sunflower seed combination is one of my favourites, but obviously granola is endlessly flexible, so feel free to use whatever you'd like. I think any kind of nut, seed, or dried fruit would taste yummy in granola. I think for my next batch I'm going to try a coconut-apricot-almond combo.

One word of advice: it really is important to stick around the kitchen while the granola is baking and stir it every few minutes. Towards the end of the cooking time the granola can go from toasted to burnt in just seconds! But it makes your house smell great, so it's worth the stirring.


Cranberry-Coconut Granola (makes 5 cups)

1/4 c. oil
pinch salt
1/4 c. unsweetened apple juice concentrate
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
3 cups rolled oats (regular or quick, not instant or steel cut)
1 c. unsweetened coconut
1 c. sunflower seeds
zest of one orange
2/3 c. dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine all ingredients except the cranberries, and mix thouroughly in a large mixing bowl. Spread over a cookie sheet. Bake for approximately 20 minutes. Stir every 5 minutes for the first 15 minutes or so, and then watch carefully for the last 5. When it is a little lighter than you think it should be, it's done. (The mixture is extremely hot, so it will continute to darken even after you take it out of the oven.) Stir in the dried cranberries, and store in jars after the granola has cooled completely.

Enjoy!