Wednesday

db is really the creative cook in our house. He can take any ingredients and make a fabulous meal out of it. (If only he had a blog! Naw...it would just be about hockey, and maybe shrooming.) On the other hand, I like recipes. We have dozens of cookbooks that I like to use regularly. I have a few standbys that I often return to, but when I have a handful of ingredients that I want to use, I'll turn to my cookbooks to guide the way. And what a selection of vegan cookbooks there are out there in the world, which is a great thing because it means more people are interested and more people are cooking vegan. Hurray! 

Yesterday, I had broccoli as my main ingredient that I wanted to use. I turned to Veganomicon to whip up these broiled polenta with broccoli mixed in. After putting all of my energy into the polenta, I put together a quick mixed greens salad with radicchio and raspberry vinaigrette with a healthy sprinkle of hemp seeds.

 Earlier in the day (I had the day off), I had time to bake another selection from the Flying Apron's Gluten-Free and Vegan Baking Book.

ginger wheel cookies 

I skipped the wheel spoke part with the fork tine making the pattern and just opted to sprinkle generously with sugar before baking. These are soft and chewy cookies. Very tasty.

Vegan MoFo Gluten Free Baking

It's that time of year again! It's Vegan MoFo!

I'll admit that my last MoFo attempt was a bit weak, my heart wasn't in it. This year I feel a little more inspired, more like the first year I participated when MoFo was just getting started. So get ready for a whole month of vegan food in whoville.

Of course every month around here is the vegan month of food, but I don't blog about it as much as I use to. That's just the nature of my blog; it changes as do I.

Okay, okay on to the food.

One of my challenges over the last couple of years has been to cut out the gluten in my vegan diet. Because I have a wheat sensitivity and do not have celiac disease, I can cheat and do often cheat by eating something wheaty (the most recent example being our trip to Portland where I had to sample some of the goodies from Sweetpea Bakery and Back to Eden Bakery).  So, I'm a cheater. Well I can strive to do better.

Just this past weekend, I purchased Flying Apron's cookbook since it was on sale at my local vegan shop.  As with many cookbooks, the delicious sounding recipes and glossy photos attracted me, but what attracted me most was that this cookbook contains recipes that are tried, tested, and true, and are served in the Flying Apron Bakery in Seattle (next trip).

My first recipe! Flying Apron's Buckwheat Biscuits seemed like a good place to start because I had all of the ingredients in the cupboard, and wanted something to have on hand for breakfast. Also biscuits are a bit of a nostalgic food for me. Drop biscuits or the rolled biscuits my mom made through my childhood and still makes today has always been a favorite of mine. This recipe is a bit different: there was some chilling time for the dough; there is working with non-gluten flours that means the properties are just different; there is also sugar in the dough that adds a nice sweetness to them that reminds me of a sweetened scone.  The results were a success! We're still enjoying the results. I took one to work as did db, and we both commented on how tasty these are.

I suspect that this month will have more photos from my gluten free baking.

If you want to follow more Vegan MoFo blogs or just check out the blogroll of all those participating in Vegan MoFo, you can find the list on the Vegan MoFo blog.